Commerce, Justice, Science; Energy and Water Development; and Interior and Environment Appropriations Act, 2026

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, my friend and colleague from Wyoming mentioned many things about the Republican tax bill, but he failed to mention the most important part of it: It ended up giving tax breaks to the wealthiest people in America. It ended up cutting $1 trillion from the Medicaid Program. Wait until that cut works its way through the economy to your local hospital and clinic, and watch what happens.

They have already warned us: Unless something is done, there is going to be a lot of closures and a lot of reductions of services in these hospitals in rural areas, in small towns, and the inner city. That is a fact.

If you want to give tax breaks to the wealthiest people and you don't care about the impact on the regular families of America, that is exactly what happened with the Republican tax bill, and that is the reason why Democrats did not support it. We believe that tax cuts should be geared toward working families who are struggling with affordability.

President Trump gave a speech yesterday in Michigan and choked on the word ``affordability.'' He hates it. It is a Democratic word. It is a hoax. It is a fake.

It is reality. It is reality.

I don't know how often the President of the United States--and I am sure he never has a chance--gets to go shopping at the local grocery store. I do so almost every weekend I am home. I see what has happened to prices. My wife reminds me; other families remind me. The cost of living has gone up, and you give tax breaks here and there and the other place and primarily to wealthy people. It is not going to provide the kind of relief that working families desperately need. That is one of the issues that will be decided by the voters in the next election. Immigration

Mr. President, the year was 1939, and there was a ship that sailed from Germany destined for Cuba. It was bringing Jewish refugees from Europe, which was falling into Nazi control, to a free place to live in Cuba.

Unfortunately, as that ship, the St. Louis, approached Havana, Cuba, it was turned away. They wouldn't allow those Jewish passengers to find freedom in Cuba at the time. They then appealed to the United States, to President Roosevelt and his administration, and they too turned them away. The ship got so close, according to press reports, that they could actually hear the bands playing in the nightclubs in Miami. But they couldn't land the ship.

And so they took the St. Louis back to Europe with a thousand Jewish refugees. Many of them became victims of the Holocaust. It was a bitter lesson learned, particularly in time of war and strife, that there is a need for countries, where there is peaceful situation, to step up and do their part to try to help refugees, those seeking asylum.

After World War II, the United States decided that the St. Louis was a valuable lesson. We started leading the nations of the world in accepting refugees. It was an act of mercy, a humanitarian response to the reality that these people were facing. And we were proudly leading that effort for decades, until very recently.

Under this President, the whole situation and policy have changed. This administration, unfortunately, is highlighting a policy that turns away refugees. The Trump administration has diverted resources from law enforcement and national security efforts to focus on arresting immigrants who pose no threat to public safety. We have seen it in Chicago. We have seen it in Minneapolis and in other cities. This administration is targeting legal immigrants who followed every rule and regulation.

Over the past few months, the Trump administration has issued a flurry of new policies effectively ending lawful--lawful--immigration for individuals from 39 countries. It harkens back to the bitter experience of the St. Louis.

In November last year, President Trump used the tragic shooting of two National Guard members to justify a freeze on all new visas of Afghan nationals. Many of these visa applicants fought against the Taliban, alongside American forces, and now must flee Afghanistan to avoid punishment or death for the crime of working for us. President Trump has abandoned them--so much for loyalty.

These men and women in Afghanistan decided they would risk their lives to stand by our soldiers during that conflict. They survived, and now they are asking us to protect them from the Taliban's excesses. The President has decided: No, thanks.

He slammed the door on Afghan nationals who risked their lives to save the lives of American soldiers, and he didn't stop there. In addition to suspending these applications for Afghan nationals, the Trump administration paused all asylum refugee decisions.

The Trump administration has extended broad immigration bans to anyone from 39 different countries, including individuals from those countries who are already in the United States. Going through an asylee claim, a refugee claim, playing by the book, takes months and sometimes years in refugee camps. People go through extensive background checks before they are even considered to come to the United States.

In this situation, those who have successfully made that journey are once again in jeopardy with the new Trump policy.

The administration is reviewing again all legal immigration cases already approved for individuals from the banned nations. To be clear, this expansion is not limited to nationals of countries on the list. It also includes anyone who has been born in any one of those countries, even if they lived the majority of their life somewhere else.

My office has received reports that Canadians--Canadians--born in Iran have been impacted by this new Trump ban. There have even been reports of the ban to stop parents who have completed every step of the adoption process from bringing their new babies to the United States.

The administration has claimed this is about vetting immigrants to protect public safety. But tell me: Does it make sense to deny entry for a baby for vetting reasons?

What the President has done to bring down the hammer on those who are legally immigrating from what he calls ``s-hole countries''--remember that phrase, when the President, in his first term, referred to those from Africa and Haiti in profane and racist terms in the Oval Office? At the time, the White House denied having said that. But I was there, physically present, when the President made those statements, not once but twice. I was in that meeting, and I confirm that he used those vulgar terms referring to people from other countries.

Two Republican Senators publicly accused me of lying. Well, in a rally in Pennsylvania, last month, President Trump bragged that he had indeed used that slur that I referred to earlier.

And at a Cabinet meeting, last month, he publicly called Somali immigrants ``garbage.'' The President of the United States referred to people from Somalia as ``garbage.''

Just yesterday, the administration announced the termination of Somalis' designation for temporary protected status. TPS allows immigrants from a country that is unsafe to temporarily remain in the United States.

Does the President really think Somalia is a safe or stable place for these individuals to return? I think not. He just doesn't care.

These racist comments and policies have confirmed what we have known all along. The President has deep-seated animus for immigrants who are not White. Throughout this past year, he has harnessed tragedies to justify his anti-immigrant crusade, first with the National Guard shootings and now with many of his fraud allegations we heard here on the floor of the Senate day after day.

Last Friday, in the midst of Federal immigration agents' assault on Minneapolis, Department of Homeland Security began arresting recently arrived refugees in Minnesota. These refugees have already gone through intense vetting, sometimes for years, before they have been allowed to come to the United States. They followed our laws, came here in the ``right way.'' Now their lives will be turned upside down again to serve the President's political agenda.

The fraud in Minnesota is serious and warrants continued investigation, but punishing thousands of refugees because of crimes they had nothing to do with is just plain wrong and inhumane.

The Trump administration has tried to politicize this fraud investigation, but the first prosecutions for this fraud began in 2022 during the previous Biden administration.

The administration says their immigration policies are intended to protect America. I am calling their bluff. What they have done instead is to effectively halt legal immigration for a long list of countries, all of which have majority non-White populations. This was their real intention all along.

Already, the lives of people in our immigration system, particularly people of color, have been unfairly upended. Immigrants are seeing their long-scheduled green card interview canceled. Naturalization candidates have been pulled from their scheduled citizenship ceremonies.

I know this to be true because it happened to my constituents who reached out to our office. They are rightfully upset that the administration has stopped them, these individuals, after already approving them for citizenship. They can't take the oath of allegiance to our country, and they don't know where this process is going to end.

My mother was a naturalized citizen to the United States. I keep her certificate framed in my office in the U.S. Capitol. Those who are willing to take the oath of allegiance to our country become some of our most loyal citizens. My mom was one of them. We cannot abandon them.

We must not allow America to turn its back on immigrants who followed every rule and make America stronger. It would be an affront to the Constitution and a retreat from our values and heritage as a nation of immigrants.

This is an awful situation where helpless people are being exploited for political reasons. It is time for both political parties to step aside from the campaign for a moment and speak to the values that make America a better country than most. I am proud to be part of this country, but we are a nation of immigrants and should never forget it.

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Mark Kelly for bringing us together on the floor to talk about Citizens United.

Senator Kelly has the honor of representing the State of Arizona. When I was a Member of the House of Representatives, I served with a Congressman from Arizona named Morris Udall. He was a great guy. He ran for President. He was, I guess, the source of more jokes and comedy than any politician of his day. He used to say: If you have politics in your bloodstream, only embalming fluid will replace it.

I am living proof that he was right. In 1982, I decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time. This was after I lost three straight elections. My wife said this is my last chance. So I took on an incumbent in 1982 for the U.S. House of Representatives. He had been in that seat for 22 years. But because of the quirky law in Illinois, the Democrats got to draw the map, so I got a map against the Republican incumbent which was 40 percent new territory. I had a chance. And 1982 was a big year for Democrats. I remember it. I still remember my fear: Would I raise enough money to be a viable candidate? Nobody knew for sure.

The average cost of a congressional campaign in 1982 was $215,000, for a campaign to run for the U.S. House. I raised and spent, as did my opponent, $800,000. We set records--$800,000.

If you say that today--``Would you start off and wage a campaign for the House with $800,000?''--they would say ``Well, that is just for the announcement, right? You are going to need a few more dollars if you are serious about a campaign.'' The number has grown dramatically and now is in the millions for candidates for the House and for the Senate.

You are looking at the last open, public sponsor of public financing of campaigns. Nobody else has tackled it since I stopped introducing it. At the time I introduced it, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a Republican, was my cosponsor. We had a bipartisan bill. I still believe it is the right way to go, but it doesn't have a chance.

Under the current system that has been described by my colleagues here on the floor, there is so much entrenched money that they virtually control the agenda and scare the living hell out of average individuals who don't have a fortune to spend. That is the reality of what we face.

Senator Booker is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is an interesting world we live in. There is a group--I won't name their names on the floor, but it would be easy to figure out who I am talking about--that admonishes me regularly, as the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that I am just not progressive enough; I am not doing enough.

This influence group here in Washington is a dark money operation. We don't know where their money is coming from. They are the reformers, this dark money operation.

We now have, currently, a debate going on on the floor about cryptocurrency. Remember what happened in the last campaign on cryptocurrency? The industry decided that they would pick out one or two Democrats and make a point that they were in the wrong position when it came to cryptocurrency. So they spent $40 million to defeat one of our colleagues here in the Senate, and they succeeded. That is the kind of thing that happens now: 40 million bucks. That is more than a good day raising money for most candidates, but that is the reality of what we face.

This decision that we face today--Citizens United--was mindless. To say that a business has the same rights as individuals under the Constitution is a mindless conclusion. And it is no surprise. If I am not mistaken--I will double-check--if I am not mistaken, not a single Supreme Court Justice who ruled in that case had ever stood for office, ever had a fundraiser, ever had to go through it and understand what it does to you.

I think ethical reform that is meaningful requires a scandal that is earth-shattering. I am not sure what is left by way of scandal. What is going on with corruption in this business has become almost routine. And I am sorry to say that because so many people on both sides of the aisle are good, honest people who are public servants trying to do their best. But this Citizens United decision and where we are in politics today have changed this business so much, I am not sure we can ever reclaim the kind of idealism that we all aspire to as public servants in this institution.

I thank the Senator for drawing us to the floor today. There is a lot of work to be done, and I may not be around for some of it. But I will still remember that $800,000 when I first ran was a record. Now it is rather routine.

Let's make sure that if you have politics in your bloodstream, it doesn't take embalming fluid to replace it. Let's replace it with the ideals that we all aspire to.

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