Department of Defense

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, today, Donald Trump is announcing a $12 billion bailout for farmers who have been punished by his trade war and his tariffs.

Let's be very clear. The reason farmers need relief at all is largely because Donald Trump betrayed them and decimated their businesses with his disastrous tariffs.

Now, Donald Trump is patting himself on the back, acting like a hero to farmers, while using taxpayer dollars to clean up the mess he created. It is textbook Donald Trump incompetence.

I want to make three very important points about this announcement.

First, as is so often the case with Donald Trump, we have no idea whether the farmers who actually need help will ever see this $12 billion. He always makes promises that don't deliver. He regularly announces that relief is coming with all due haste, and, somehow, time and time again, the money never reaches the people who need it most.

So if I were a farmer, I wouldn't count on this money. It is probably more of Donald Trump's big talk without really delivering. That is what has happened over and over again.

Second, a one-time payment for farmers is cold comfort for all the headache and anxiety and losses they have endured because of Donald Trump's trade war.

Farmers do not want a handout. Ask them. They want markets. But Donald Trump's policies have killed the markets our farmers rely on to make a living.

This is especially true for soybean farmers. China went from buying more than $12 billion in American soybeans last year to virtually nothing by the middle of this year. That Chinese need for soybeans didn't disappear. Contracts went to other countries, like Argentina, which Trump then bailed out at U.S. farmers' expense. And producers in those countries--Argentina, Brazil--have now locked in new long-term deals that will shut American farmers out for years and which a one- time check can't alleviate. A one-time check isn't a solution; it is a bandaid over gunshot wounds.

Again, ask our farmers. They want long-term contracts. Unfortunately, they are not going to get them because, when we cut off China, China went to Brazil and Argentina, and those soybean growers said: Yes, we will give you soybeans, but not for a year--3 years, 4 years, 5 years.

Finally, the American people are being punished twice for Donald Trump's costly tariffs. Families have seen the cost of beef, produce, and other groceries skyrocket over this year because of the tariffs. And now they are told their taxpayer dollars must be used to clean up the mess that Donald Trump and his tariffs created.

So, on the first, he tells consumers: You have to pay more for the tariffs.

Then the taxpayers have to pay more because the farmers are in such trouble because of what Donald Trump did.

Donald Trump's announcement today is hardly a triumph. It is an admission of failure--failure to help farmers, failure to rein in China, and failure to lower costs.

(The remarks of Mr. Schumer pertaining to the introduction of S. Res. 533 are printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'') The Economy

Mr. President, on Donald Trump and the costs that Americans pay for his policies, tomorrow, Donald Trump will travel to Pennsylvania to give a speech on what he calls his economic accomplishments.

We all know how this is going to turn out. Donald Trump will spend the first few minutes of his speech trying to stick to his talking points. Then he will spend the next 2 hours rambling about how affordability is a Democratic scam, a fake narrative. He will blame Joe Biden for his own failures while offering zero solutions to bring down costs.

Americans who are paying more for daily essentials want to see the President act, not ramble from a podium. Affordability isn't some kind of messaging issue, and it is certainly not a scam, as Donald Trump claims from inside his little bubble. He doesn't even realize what Americans are going through as they worry and struggle to pay the bills that come in each week and each month. It is a crisis Donald Trump himself exacerbated with his own policies.

There aren't enough speeches in the world to reverse the damage Donald Trump has done to rising costs. After all, those tariffs have raised prices across the board on groceries, on clothing, on energy.

Whose tariffs are they? Donald Trump's.

Who promised to bring costs down on day one and then turned around and cut healthcare, cut SNAP benefits, closed rural hospitals, and axed good-paying energy jobs in red and blue States alike? Donald Trump.

Who has been completely silent and invisible as Americans speed toward a healthcare cliff unlike any we have seen in a long time, and who has done nothing as families are on the brink of paying thousands of dollars more on healthcare premiums? Donald Trump.

So, look, the matter here is simple: Donald Trump can blame the previous administration all he wants for his own failures. He can keep calling affordability a con job or a fake narrative or a Democratic scam. He can keep pretending everything is going great.

But, Trump, it can't change the reality that you have created. People are hurting, and people need help paying for the things they need every day.

Donald Trump has failed to deliver on the No. 1 thing the American people care about: costs--how much it costs them to buy the things they need. And it is going to come back to haunt Republicans very, very soon. Healthcare

Mr. President, on healthcare, well, we are at the start of an extremely important week for Donald Trump and for Republicans when it comes to our Nation's healthcare crisis. On Thursday, the Senate will vote on the Democrats' bill for a clean, 3-year extension of the ACA premium tax credits.

The question Republicans face this week is very simple: Will they support our bill and lower people's premiums or will they block our bill and send premiums through the roof? That is what is at stake on the vote this Thursday.

Leader Thune just gave a speech blasting the ACA.

But, Leader Thune, you blast the ACA; well, where is the Republican plan?

The Republicans have no plan. They are so divided between themselves that they can't even put a plan together.

We Democrats do have a plan, and it is this bill for a clean, 3-year extension. This is the only way to solve this problem now before premiums go way up and, in January, people are faced with such high bills. Our bill prevents costs from going up right now.

Here is the reality: Most Americans want to see these credits extended.

Leader Thune blasts the ACA, but he has no plan. Amazingly, he has no plan when 55 percent of Trump voters--of MAGA voters--want to see the credits extended.

So I urge my Republican colleagues not to follow Leader Thune.

You have one chance, Republican colleagues, to get this right.

Left to their own devices, Republicans don't have a snowball's chance in hell of fixing the healthcare crisis--not a snowball's chance in hell of fixing this crisis--because they are so divided. Even the plans they claim are reasonable can't move forward because one-half of the Republicans want one thing, a third of the Republicans want another thing, a sixth of the Republicans want a third thing, and they can't agree.

The contrast is stark: Republicans are divided, and Democrats are united. We want to extend these credits. It is the right thing to do for the American people as they stand on the edge of the cliff.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest failures in leadership on healthcare has been Donald Trump. As our country faces a crisis that will touch the lives of millions of people, he is sitting on the sidelines. For months, we have urged him to meet with us, to talk with us, and to come to an agreement on fixing ACA premiums. Instead, he has isolated himself in the White House and blasted the ACA on Truth Social while doing nothing--nothing--to prevent this from happening, while doing nothing to present a real plan.

Republicans are nowhere on healthcare, and the clock is ticking. Americans' livelihoods are at stake. Our healthcare system is at stake. The future of our hospitals, many of which will be overrun when people lose insurance, is also at stake.

Republicans who claim to worry about healthcare costs have one last chance to act, and that is to join Democrats in supporting our bill for a clean, 3-year extension. Executive Nominations

Finally, Mr. President, on these noms packages that are coming forward, today, Senate Republicans are moving forward on a new nominee package that is chock-full of horribly unqualified and shockingly radical nominees.

All year long, Republicans have bent the knee to Donald Trump--bent the knee to Trump--and turned the Senate's duty of advice and consent into obey and confirm, and this package of nominees is no different.

By moving these nominees in one package, Republicans in the Senate are trying to hide how bad these nominees are from the American people. They would be embarrassed to have a debate even of 2 hours. They would be embarrassed to have a vote because these nominees are so bad.

We all know that Donald Trump and the way he nominates people often are perverse. If someone has broken the law or if someone has done a bad thing, he almost wants to nominate them, and the folks around here are going along.

Let me give you a few quick examples. Thomas Bell to be inspector general of HHS. He is supposed to be looking at fraud, waste, and abuse. This guy is supposed to be inspector general of HHS. Well, Bell is a well-documented Trump loyalist and anti-abortion extremist who has a history of committing repeated fraud, manufacturing fake documents, and misusing unauthorized funds. This is who the Republicans want to confirm as an HHS watchdog? Give us a break. Give America a break.

By the way, these nominees are going to come back and embarrass Trump, just as we warned about Hegseth. If you pick a FOX News commentator to run the most complicated life-and-death Department in our country, he will embarrass you, we said, or worse, and that is just what is happening. It is worse.

What about James Percival to be general counsel at DHS? He is another Trump loyalist who has been a key figure in pushing the administration to defy court orders in regard to deportation actions.

Then there is Jeffrey Hall to be Assistant Administrator at the EPA. How much experience does Mr. Hall have for this position? Zero. And in his time acting in the role, the EPA dismissed a complaint, against a Trump donor group, that alleged that pesticides were sprayed by guards on detainees at an ICE facility.

I could go on and on and on as so many of these nominees are awful-- this is chock-full of unqualified, horrible nominees--but the bottom line is this: Democrats want individual votes on these nominees. We want time to debate them on the floor, and we want the American people to see for themselves who Donald Trump and the Republicans are trying to appoint to serious positions of power.

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