mainstream, the handful of more mainstream republicans who know how bad this is right now haven't had the backbone to oppose those changes. we hope they find them. so this bill is worse on health care, worse on snap. it'll kill 900,000 good-paying jobs in clean energy. folks, you don't like paying your electricity bills? you'll pay 10% more on their electric bills because of this big, ugly betrayal. it'll also kill a million health care jobs. you put it all together and there's no other way to put it. at the very last minute, senate republicans made the bill more extreme to cater to the radicals in the house and the senate. republicans want to hide the truth so badly, in fact, that they even -- they're even ready to blow up the senate rules to get it done. senate republicans are doing

something that has never been done before in this chamber, never, by democrats or republicans -- using fake math and budgetary hocus-pocus to make it seem like the gargantuan tax break for billionaires is going to cost virtually nothing. that's insane. it's delusional. current policy baseline doesn't take into account that account budget numbers so these cuts expiring. so when you put them back up again, the deficit increases. it's simple math. second grade math. but our colleagues just, again, in a, frankly, subsidy to help -- in a frenzy to help the billionaires to do even that. republicans know it. that's why they're squirming. you can see sort of the faces come on the floor. they don't look very happy because they know how bad this stuff is. they can use whatever budgetary

gimmicks they want. republicans can use whatever budg budgetary gimmicks they want to make their math work on paper, but you can't paper over the real consequences of adding trillions and trillions to the debt in one fell swoop, and cbo, nonpartisan, everyone who looks at this says it's going to increase the deficit, not the so-called party of deficit hawks. that's out the window. so what's going to happen w what -- when they pass this bill if they do? hope they don't. our children and grandchildren will be faced with a lifetime of higher borrowing costs. as i said, mortgage costed, costs to buy a car, cost of a credit card, harder to start a business. every one will get worse. the ceiling will close in. the economic driver that's been

the driver of optimism have sputter and ossify with this $4.45 trillion deficit explosion. it's deeply irresponsible to future generations, to our children, to our grandchildren to pass this bill. and that's not just members on this side. aisle saying it. independent experts across the political spell rum -- many of them very conservative republicans but are at least honest -- say it, too. and plenty of republicans in both the house and senate have said it. it remains to be seen if their words and their actions will align. the question is asked, has to be asked, why is this even happening? why is it nightmare of a bill moving forward? why are republicans forcing our country down this ruinous road when they know the fiscal harms, when they know this is a rush job? well, we know by now.

tax cuts to billionaires and corporate special interests. and not just another round. but in fact they make them permanent. our chin, our grandchildren are -- our children, our grandchildren are going to be saddled with these cuts so that a handful of billionaires get a big break. while working people lose their medicaid, while hungry kids lewis access to food funding, while clean energy gejobs are taken away, i say to my clean friends, when that plant is makes batteries or wind or solar or the person employing hundreds of people to put panels on people's roofs fold and people lose their jobs, don't shrug your shoulders and say, you don't know why that hachltd you made it happen with a nasty bill. it just makes no sense.

we need more energy, a.i. everyone says we need more energy. and to take away the cheapest, quickest way to put more electrons on the grid, solar, makes no sense except we know donald trump has an irrational, infa infantile mania against clean energy, so they all listen to him. makes no sense. this bill sabotaging of america, it's the sabotage ago of america. it is antithetical to what the country needs. it is and the thet doolittle what the american people -- it's antithetical to what the american people demanded last fall. and our republican colleagues don't even want to tell the american people the truth. that's why democrats are here on the floor today, sounding the alarm, set something the record straight -- setting the record strachlt i also must say this. the way this bill is being passed so deeply violates the

spirit of the senate. the majority forgets that this chamber is unlike any other institution in government. it's meant to facilitate debate, careful consideration, sound judgment, honest numbers. we're supposed to resist the passions of the radical he can extreme. we're supposed to hold the line against policies that will devastate our country. we're supposed to resist the gravitational pull of extremists like donald trump, who gets these little bugaboos in his head and then wrecks america, and they all go along. senate republicans are turning their back on the senate's long-standing tradition of debate-deliberation. by uphending the rule of the change to hide the cost of their bill, republicans simply put are accelerating the erosion of the senate to the nth degree.

senate republicans are turning their back on what makes this institution great. they're turning their back on the people, their own constituents. -- in their own communities, people struggling to afford to go see a doctor. you have a child with cancer and you don't have health care? how can we put people in that position? or families who have to choose between paying for groceries or paying for prescription drug costs? or families who are watching their electric bills go up and up. families who are paying more and more costs. america, you don't want to pay higher costs, we don't want you to on our side of the aisle. the republicans are making it happen a you will pay more and more and more. and about the future? they're not worried about our kids' livelihood. they're not worried that kids won't be able to find good-paying jobs.

families are worried about the future of this country. but the republicans are not. and they're worried -- americans are worried about the continued radicalization of leaders in government, and here's the shining example. so the bill is the wrong answer for the american people. by every objective standard, it's deeply irresponsible. it's not only a violation of how the senate is supposed to work, it's a violation of the promises that republicans and donald trump, when they campaigned, made to the american people to look after their issues, not those at the very top. so i implore my republican colleagues, there is still time, abandon these terrible policies. we'll continue to have this debate in a real way, not just

jamming it through in the dark of night. our democratic -- my democratic colleagues and i will continue exposing the truth, and if republicans go down that road, we will continue to make sure today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year that the american people know exactly what happened here. i assure my republican colleagues, i assure them, this vote will not be forgotten. their betrayal will not go unanswered. this bill must not stand. i yield the floor. ms. warren: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. ms. warren: thank you, mr. president. and thank you, mr. leader, for setting the record straight. it is really awful when we hear republicans come down here and they just don't tell the truth about the bill they are trying to pass. maybe that's why they tried to pass it in it the middle of the night. they think no one will really

notice. mr. schumer: will the gentlelady yield? ms. warren: yes. mr. schumer: all you have to do is is look at their faces. they know that what they're doxing they know it is unpopular. they know, as senator murkowski said, this that they're all afraid. but it is time for them to stand up. ms. warren: yup. yup. on friday, i met vivian, an 11-year-old kid from winston-salem. she is a lot like any other 11-year-old. but for vivvie, going to school depends on medicaid because medicaid covers the cost for wheelchairs, for her therapists and for her health aide. right now republicans are trying to rip away health care from kids like vivian. the cruelty is truly breath taking. i ask for one republican senator, just one republican

senator, to plans to vote for this bill to look into vivvie's eyes and tell her that her health care, it's just not a priority for this country. you know, mitch mcconnell said to republican senators that he knew they were getting calls about medicaid, but not to worry about people losing their care because -- according to mitch mcconnell -- they will get over it. so i ask the republican senators to look at vivvie and her sisters and her mom and her dad and say if vivvie loses her medicaid and her wheelchair and therapists and her health aide, tell all of them that they will get over it. because here's the deal -- vivvie won't get over it. her family won't get over it. the people of north carolina

won't get over it. none of us -- massachusetts, idaho, louisiana -- none of us will get over it. the cruelty here is off the charts a. but the part that really burns is the republicans are trying to slash the health care that keeps kids like vivvie alive so they can hand out more tax cuts for billionaires. it is beyond cruel. it is obscene. i am angry, and we should all be angry. because instead of playing at the pool or the park like a regular kid on summer break, vivian had to come here to washington to beg senators not to cut her health care. in a country as rich as ours, that shouldn't even be a question. now, i actually don't think that my republican colleagues have lost their hearts.

they have lost their spines. it seems that all they can do now is bow down to donald trump and his billionaire donors. they will bow down, even if it means hurts families, community hospitals and nursing homes in their own state. trump wants the republicans? congress to hand out giant checks to the wealthiest americans and the biggest corporations and the republican senators are willing to do that, even if it means kicking vivvie to the curb. republicans know what they're doing. they know that this bill will hurt people. they know that this bill will kill people. and though it's hard to believe, they just look the other way. but on behalf of vivvie and millions of other kids and mamas and seniors and families that rely on the lifesaving care that medicaid makes possible, my republican colleagues should

grow a spine and stop this awful bill in its tracks. if it wasn't bad enough that this bill is set to rip away health care from 17 million americans to pay for tax giveaways for billionaires, it actually has a budge of other filthy giveaways buried in it, too. who wins if republicans pass this big, ugly bill? billionaires, wall street, big tech, big oil, the wealthiest americans and the biggest corporations. big oil will get at special get out of paying your taxes card while millions of people lose their health care coverage. billions of dollars for big oil, nothing for vivvie. meta, oh, man there's a company

that's really struggling. meta will win $15 billion to incentivize them to do research in 2022, 2023, and 2024. think about that. what meta does is already done. but under this bill, meta gets a $15 billion check on the day this bill passes, simply for existing, while families lose access to their health care. wall street wins big with a provision republicans squeezed in that would slash funding for the consumer financial protection bureau. giant corporations want the opportunity to cheat american families again. so, republicans are desperately trying to take the cop off the

beat. who loses? thanks to this big ugly bill,ic health care, families who need a little extra help putting food on the table, grandmas and grandpas in nursing homes, little babies and their mamas. if republicans pass this bill, 17 million americans will have their health care ripped away. that number has kept growing as the republicans keep making more and more changes to the bill. for them, it is just a question of how many more americans they can rip away health care from. this bill would also make the biggest cut to food assistance for families, kids, and veterans in american history. and here's one to underscore, one out of every four nursing homes in america would have to

shut down under this bill. you know, my republican colleagues should just call a few seniors who are in nursing homes in their home states, and just go over the plans for where those folks are supposed to go next. what exactly do the republicans have in mind for them? maybe call the daughter of someone who's in one of those nursing homes and explain how she has to become a full-time caregiver once this bill passes. maybe call just a few of the people whose lives you plan to tear apart. budgets are about our values, and republicans have made their values clear. they are willing to throw millions of americans under the bus so that they can help out a handful of their billionaire

buddies and giant corporations. they should be ashamed. here's what democrats believe, democrats believe no baby should go hungry so mark zuckerberg can buy another hawaiian island. democrats believe no person with a disability, who needs a wheelchair or home health aide to live independently, should have to give that up so jeff bezos can buy a third notyacht. democrats believe no grandma should be pushed out of her nursing home so elon musk can take a subsidized rocket ship ride to mars. it doesn't have to be this way. what if, instead of tax breaks for billionaires, we make the rich pay their fair share? what if, instead of slashing health care for our kids, we make it possible for every

american who see a doctor when they're sick, without breaking the bank? and what if, instead of giving big oil more giant handouts, we make universal child care a reality for families all across this country? we can tax the rich. damn it, if jeff bezos can afford to rent venice for $50 million for his wedding, he can afford to pitch in his fair share of taxes so the next kid has a chance to make it big, and the kid after that, and the kid after that. we can make life better for working people. we can make it easier, not harder. we can lower costs for families, not jack them up even more, like this bill does. we can put families first, not billionaires and billionaire

corporations. democrats believe this. democrats are willing to fight for this. we will vote no on this awful bill. and for kids like vivian, for seniors in nursing homes, and families who rely on home health aides, and for the millions more americans this bill will hurt, i urge my republican colleagues grow a spine and vote no. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: mr. president, before she leaves the floor, i want to thank my colleague in particular for putting a human face on what this is all about. that small child, the senior you were talking about. i'm going to pick up on what you said, and i thank you for your leadership. mr. president, i'm going to get into the specifics of this

horrifying bill in a moment, all the details, the health care carnage and clean energy bloodbath republicans are dragging america toward. first i want to spend a few minutes on the state of the senate and our democracy. as of a few hours ago, the rules of the senate are whatever republicans feel like when the day begins. it's democracy defying, plain and simple. the bill before the senate is lo loaded, loaded, with fraudulent budget math that hides trillions of dollars in handouts to corporations and the ultra wea wealthy. it's a violation of the rules that used to be followed for years, for the reconciliation process. it's a violation of the congressional budget act.

it's a violation of common sense. republicans decided none of that mat matters. they've kind of gone nuclear to advance the bill. apparently, in this chamber, if the republican chair of the budget committee says so, one plus one equals three. that is unsustainable. we are going to be a sicker, poorer, weaker country if this bill becomes law and the republicans have used this process, going nuclear to pass it. but these moves cut both ways, and there will be a lot of clean-up for democrats to handle down the road. now, in my time in public service, mr. president, i have never seen a more destructive, regr reg regressive, common-defying -- common sense defying bill debated in the senate. this bill will determine the future of health care in america. millions will lose health

insurance if republicans pass the bill. my colleagues seem to be ignore the fact that rural hospitals are the anchor of life in much of america. this bill will sever that anchor and set rural health care adrift. here's how flawed the republican plan is, the danger they're causing for rural hospitals is so great republicans have had to create a rural hospital relief fund. it is a band-aid on an amputation. i can tell you, one thing i know for sure is only in washington, d.c. would you create a relief fund to address a problem that you caused. how about you just not cut $1 trillion from medicaid in the first place? i wanted to get a sense of what rural america thought of this legislation. so last weekend i held four town

halls in three eastern oregon counties. it's as rural as it gets. donald trump carried these counties overwhelmingly. in one donald trump received more than 70% of the vote. this is where i held an open-to-all town hall meeting. it happens to have one of the highest medicaid enrollments in the country. the message was very clear and very loud -- this bill will be a disaster on rural health. now, health care is a top employer in america. if these cuts go through, the health care workforce in rural areas of our nation is going to be decimated. nurses, doctors, support staff will lose their jobs and rural economies are going to suffer. many of the americans that will feel the consequences of this legislation today walk an economic tightrope. many have multiple jobs.

millions more americans will lose benefits, like home care and mental health and services that already fall far short of what our people expect. these are overwhelmingly kids, people with disabilities, seniors, all to pay for more tax cuts for multinational corporations and the ultra wealthy. it's not just the cuts. it's also a whole lot more red tape, making it harder for people to get care. at the center of the republican medicaid changes is a bunch of red tape thickets designed to entrap people into a never never-ending maze of a.i. chatbots and phone trees that make it impossible to get the coverage you need. even if you manage to get through the bureaucratic water torture and sign up for

medicaid, the republican plan says you lose your job, you lose your health care. why would the congress want to inflict that on more people? nobody i could find wants these cuts, no matter their political persuasion. i was in places that were bright red. i'm sure most of us can agree there's a real debate on how to make health care more affordable and accessible. but this bill achieves none of that. let me mention seniors my colleagues have touched on the elderly. two in three nursing home beds in america are covered by medicaid. if republicans pass this into law, conditions will dete deteriorate. seniors will be forced out of their nursing homes or forced to move in with family that doesn't have the necessary skills to care for their aging parents or grandparents. nursing homes would be forced to shut their doors as a result of these cuts during a time states are in desperate need of more

nursing home options, not fewer. the bill also repeals nursing home safety standards. that's going to mean fewer nurses and nursing homes. you would think that would be a concern of republicans in the trump administration. when the finance committee was considering the nomination of cms administrator mehmet oz, he said, quote, i believe we can provide quality of care equivalent to having that nurse in the nursing home using tools and technologies. dr. oz was apparently talking about a.i. i said you're for cutting nurses. what's going to happen when an 85-year-old woman has to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and needs help? he had no answers, but he's still being a big booster on artificial intelligence. i'm deeply troubled about what the trump administration has in store for america's seniors. that's on ton of the fact that home-based care most seniors prefer will be one of the first benefits states are forced to

cut because it's optional now, rather than mandatory. hundreds of thousands of seniors, mr. president, are going to see a premium increase of about $200 a month. the bill also applies the worst forms of corporate red tape to the affordable care act. shorter enrollment periods, more hoops, more bureaucracy, more red tape for americans who just want affordable health care. the carnage may get worse with the republican amendments coming up. it's my understanding they're going to offer an amendment to lower the federal medicaid match for new enrollees in what's known as the medicaid expansion. that was a key part of the affordable care act that delivered affordable health care to roughly 21 million americans last year. if this amendment is adopted, taken together with the other awful policies in the bill, it

would amount to repealing the affordable care act and making good on the 15-year republican crusade to dismantle that law. millions more working americans, mr. president, are going to lose their health insurance, and it would break a promise to the 41 states that have expanded medicaid, many of them red states. these health care cuts aren't just going to be felt by americans with medicaid and those who buy health insurance on their own are going to be similarly hit. emergency room wait times will skyrocket and premiums will spike. families will be one lost job or financial calamity away from being tossed onto a safety net with rips and tears everywhere you look. so many are going to fall between the cracks. also i wanted to touch on another horrendous provision on health care buried in the bill, the defunding of the planned

parenthood program and they're doing it in a way that's essentially a backdoor nationwide abortion ban. this provision is going to strip clinics of their funding and make it impossible for them to provide lifesaving health care, cancer screenings, annual exams. all of that will disappear for the people who rely on these clinics for basic care. the health care cuts are getting a big focus because of the challenge for so many communities but there's something else that's absolutely imperative. that's the clean energy blood path and it certainly deserves attention. in the middle of the night friday into saturday, the bill that was already a disaster for clean energy got much, much, much worse. what republicans have on offer doesn't just repeal the tax credits that i wrote for wind and solar energy in the finance committee. now we've got an actual massacre

on our hands. this republican plan actually taxes wind and solar, a new tax on the cheapest and easiest way to get new energy to the grid. at the same time somebody tucked into the bill a brand-new tax break for coal. so here we are, 2025, and the senate is about to pass a bill that taxes wind and solar while subsidizing coal. it is so backward, it leaves you slack-jawed. when you look at this bill it's awfully clear that the republican goal is to destroy key sources of clean energy in america. it's a death sentence for the wind and solar industries in our country, a total abandonment of hundreds of thousands of workers who are about to lose their job as a direct result of the bill. the head of the north american building trades union that represents millions of construction workers issued a

stunning statement on the bill yesterday. i'll read a few select lines from the statement. he said it's the biggest job-killing bill in the history of the country is how he described the republican plan. staggering and unfathomable job loss, a threat to an estimated 1.5 million construction workers. this union leader said it was the equivalent of term inflating 1,000 keystone xl pipelines, another competitive advantage to china in the race for increase dominance. he also said critical infrastructure projects will be sacrificed at the altar of ideology. mr. president, those were all direct quotes. hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy investments under the republican plan will simply disappear. not government subsidies or handouts. these are private-sector

investments we will not have. and even worse, this is a guaranteed way to hike utility bills for families and businesses of all sizes in every nook and cranny of america. i have never seen this kind of economic self-sabotage. the demand for energy booms right now. even the heads of companies involved in fossil fuels are saying to me and other members of congress, we need solar quickly to get more electrons to the grid. but republicans don't want to listen because this plan risks plunging us into an energy crisis. it would be a disaster and a total surrender to china on clean energy manufacturing. it's clear as a sunny day that all the talk from donald trump and republicans about american energy dominance was just a fraud. nothing but a hollow campaign

slogan. and i'll close with this. there is no question in my mind, mr. president, the american people went to the polls in 2024 to vote for cheaper groceries, cheaper utilities, and cheaper gas. they didn't vote to kick 16 million people off their health care so republicans can give more tax breaks to billionaires and corporations. they didn't vote for an energy crisis that benefits nobody except big oil investors. there is a real cost-of-living crisis facing american families right now, and this senate ought to be focused on finding ways to lower drug prices, for example, expand access to quality and affordable health care, and bring down the cost of living. instead, republicans are using every ounce of their power to jam through another round of tax breaks for those at the very top, and they're doing it on the

backs of everybody else. there are serious challenges ahead, mr. president, and there is going to be a serious mess to clean up but until then countless americans will needlessly suffer and die as a direct result of losing their health care under this legislation. i don't believe the american people are going to forget, and this side of the aisle will make certain that this topic is something that's dealt with again and again until the american people finally get a fair shake. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from hawaii. mr. schatz: the presiding officer is a distinguished businessman. he understands capital flows. he understands investment. there are a lot of people in this chamber and across the country who on a nonideological

basis want a consistent tax code so that businesses can invest with certainty and predictability. so let's look at some of the numbers here in terms of the impact of this bill. this bill will kill 300,000 jobs in wind and solar per year. we're going to lose out on $450 billion in capital as thousands of projects go under. and because of that, we're going to generate about 500 gigawatts less energy in the next decade. now there was a time -- and i lived through it as a politician -- there was a time when people who wanted to take climate action had to argue for that climate action because it is a planetary emergency, and there were trade-offs. and people on the other side said look, as we try to take action to deal with this planetary crisis, we can't

create shortages. we can't increase prices. we can't impede economic progress. all that has flipped. this bill will create shortages. this bill will impede economic progress. this bill will increase prices. the 500 gigawatts less energy in the next decade is pretty much exactly the amount of energy that we're going to need to meet rising demand. we are going to have energy shortages as a result of this legislation. and you don't have to love clean energy or be an environmentalist, and i love clean energy and am an environmentalist. but you don't have to care about the climate to understand that this is a basic question of supply and demand. energy demand is soaring for the first time in decades, largely, not exclusively but largely because of a.i. data centers.

and our best chance of meeting it in the next few years is with wind and solar, not oil and gas, even nuclear and geothermal are going to take awhile. that is not just a political talking point or preference of mind. it's just a fact that gas turbines are stuck in a years-long backlog. it's also a fact that 80% of the new capacity on the grid last year came from solar and storage, it's growing, it's cheap, it works. and there are hundreds more projects that are in the pipeline waiting to be hooked up. so the idea that we're going to kill the only energy, the only energy that can be brought online in the short run, the very same week that half the country was meeting, melting in a record heat wave which left tens of thousands of people without power is beyond absurd. let's talk about how this bill does all of this damage.

specifically, it creates an impossible deadline for projects to be operational in order to claim the clean energy tax credit. these are federal law, on the books. when you have a federal statute, it is not unreasonable as an investor to say i got this tax credit. i'm going to get x percent back from my initial investment. you do the pro forma, do the underwriting and figure out the thing pencils out. now what they're saying you've got to be operational in 60 days. if anyone has even built a deck in their front yard or tried to do an extension, nothing gets built in 60 days, certainly not a clean energy project. and it has to be placed in service. what does placed in service mean? you have to have a power service agreement through your public utilities commission. you have to have a deal ins place in the next 60 days after enactment or you get nothing. so imagine you're a company investing in a solar or battery

storage project. you've already put money down. you secured land and a power purchase agreement and you're working on permits. and whep you started the project, the tax code said you could claim a credit to cover the up front cost. now unless you are fully operational, you're out of luck. on average a project takes four years to go through the full process. so even if you've already started that progress, you now have very, very little time to get it done. we are going to strand hundreds of billions of dollars in capital. and so the impact on price is going to be crazy. the impact on jobs is going to be crazy. but the impact on america as an investable proposition is the most dangerous part of this. i don't know that we've ever through federal law made a big subsidy, made a big bet on a certain industry and then halfway through that process said never mind, we didn't mean

that. you're stuck. according to the edison electric institute -- and by the way, i can guarantee you this is the first and maybe last time i will ever quote the edison electric institute. that will cost people, not companies, people, ratepayers, $60 billion in this decade alone. your electric bills are about to go up. a representative of a solar company in hawaii put it this way, it is really unclear in the current version of the bill what the renewable energy industry even looks like if it were passed today. an owner of a solar company in montana worried that the credits disappearing would force him to lay off half of his works. he says montana is deeply red but a practical place. green energy renewables became a taboo phrase somehow. the practical energy needs are undeniable so we can get past our disagreements and about

phraseology. we realize that electrons, watts, amps, it's cheaper. a representative of a wind turbine company in colorado said i don't look at what we do as green, blue, red. electrons don't have color. wanting cheap electricity is not woke. is not radical. wanting reliable power and to avoid blackouts and brownouts is not a leftist project. but even if you set that aside for a minute, the states that benefited the most from these investments are republican states. according to estimates, nearly tleep-quarters of clean energy manufacturing facilities are located in republican states. it means that republicans are going to pay more for energy. it means republicans will lose jobs in clean energy because of a republican bill. it means republicans are going

to have more blackouts in their homes and businesses. gutting clean energy is not somehow owning the libs. at least some republicans in the senate and the house understand that even if their votes have not manifested to say otherwise. here's a letter from 21 house republicans earlier this year. as your conference, as our conference has long believed, an all of the above energy approach combined with a robust advanced manufacturing sector will help support the united states position as a global energy leader. countless american companies are utilizing sector wide energy tax credits, many of which have enjoyed support in congress and infrastructure for traditional and renewable sources alike. and it goes on, as energy demand continues to skyrocket, any

modifications that inhibit energy production risk sparking an energy crisis. risk sparking an energy crisis. 21 house republicans are worried about an energy crisis imposed by the republican congress. it goes on, this is especially true for energy credits with direct pass-through benefit to ratepayers where such repeals would increase utility bills the very next day. would increase utility bills the very next day. this is not me, progressive senator from the state of hawaii who has made a career out of fighting climate change. this is 21 house republicans saying we're going to create a crisis here. maybe we shouldn't pass this thing. a lot of this stuff benefits us. if we're all out here talking about all of the above, why are we cutting off our nose to spite our face just because someone wants a talking point? like people are literally going

to lose their jobs immediately upon enactment. america is going to become a very challenging place to make major investments in l immediately upon l enactment. the a.i. industry may move abroad immediately upon enactment. and prices will go up immediately pretty much right away as well. a group of 175 mayors and local leaders wrote for the first time state and local governments as well as essential nonprofit community organizations such as houses of worship, hospitals and schools can access the same clean energy tax credits as the private sector through elective pay. this has led to major projects in our communities like solar installations for town halls, alternative fueling infrastructure and charging stations for local government fleets. after one year of direct-pay implementation, over 1200 organizations, including 500 state and local governments, are

already accessing these incentives. we are excited about these projects and the benefits that they will bring to our communities. however, as local leaders, we are concerned that repealing these tax credits would create economic uncertainty in our communities as it would prevent us from accessing those important benefits. you know, i grew up to understand republican -- look, i didn't grow up as a republican, but did i understand republicans were for avoiding unintended consequences. republicans were against radical change too quickly. republicans wanted a solid business environment that people could rely upon. this is literally none of that. this is ideology manifesting itself as energy policy. and what's going to happen is people are going to lose their jobs and pay tons more for

electricity. the building trades union called this bill, quote, the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country," and they go on, simply put, this is the equivalent of terminating more than 1,000 keystone x.l. pipeline projects. i've been here for a while. keystone x.l. was a big deal it to our friends in labor. i had some tough conversations with our friends in labor about how important that project was to them and how it was in tension with some of our climate goals. listen to what they say. it is the equivalent of terminating 1,000 keystone x.l. pipeline projects. these guys are not me, sheldon

whitehouse, or representative ocasio-cortez. and they're saying this is the biggest job killer perhaps in american history. we actual dry have to do this, you know. the impetus behind this bill was essentially border spending and preventing the trump tax cuts from expiring. and then a bunch of stuff got added on because that's what happens. and we were there for our own version of this our own bbb, our own build back better. and everybody in your party piles on with something new and then the thing becomes a really challenging thing to pass because everybody has got their hobby horse and somebody's hobby horse is not just to have an all-of-the-above energy strategy but to go out of your way to kill clean energy. it doesn't matter that it's going to raise prices.

it doesn't matter that it's going to kill jobs. people at all levels in the public and private sectors are all saying the same thing, twas this is a bad bill for regular people, nor the commissioner and for the -- for the economy urgency and for the planet. one of the great things about our climate bill is it made what was good for the planet also good for the economy. we made a choice because some in our party didn't like the basic premise. they were attached to the idea of personal, political, economic sacrifice because the planet is in peril. i understand that instinct. i understand that instinct. but we pave add new path and we decided, look, there's enough technology out there. there are abundant energy

sources out there that we can actually solve our planetary crisis and create jobs and lower prices, and we can do it in such a way that blue states and red states, urban, rural, suburban all benefit. republicans are on the verge of undoing all of that even though it will hurt their constituents. and in doing so will virtually -- we're virtually guaranteeing china's dominance in clean energy for decades to come because if you're china, you cannot believe your luck. your biggest competitor is willingly forfeiting the fight over who controls the energy technologies of the future because donald trump is too busy trying to get us back to the preindustrial age. this is the worst piece of legislation for the planet in the history of our country, and it's not even close. republicans are effectively codifying big oil's wish list into law without exception. they are killing clean energy. they are subsidizing coal. they are dramatically expanding

oil and gas leasing. they are purposely jacking up energy prices and creating shortages -- and creating shortages. and for what? partially it's to find enough savings to shovel tens, if not hundreds, of dollars into the pockets of the individual billionaires but even i can canning more nan 16 million people off of health care coverage, denying food to the poor and adding almost $5 trillion to the national debt was not enough. people voted for donald trump for all sorts of reasons, but no one voted for higher energy bills. no one voted for more frequent blackouts and brownouts and dirtier air and water. no one, whether you're a democrat or a republican or independent, wants that. i want to be clear -- this fight is far from over. this fight over this bill is far from over, but even if this bill passes, it will set us back, but

the fight for the planet is bigger than any one bill or vote, and that includes the big climate bill that we passed in the previous administration. and as any moment movement that has successfully mobilized and made changes knows, progress is not linear. progress always has setbacks and frustrations. progress is not assured. states like hawaii will continue to do everything that they can to protect our environment, and the rest of the world will move on without us. because doing nothing in the face of this worsening crisis is simply not an option. but make no mistake, what congress is doing today will cost all of us in the years and decades to come. i yield the floor. mr. whitehouse: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, i rise today, and i will confess i rise today a bit angry.

about this bill, this bill cooked up in back rooms, dropped at midnight, cloaked in fake numbers, with huge handouts to big republican donors. it loots our country for some of the least deserving people you could imagine. when i first got here, this chamber filled me with awe and wonderment. our leader, harry reid, frequently called me his happiest senator. such was the awe and wonderment. -- that i felt here.

today i feel disgust. this piece of legislation is corrupt. this piece of legislation is crooked. this piece of legislation is a rotten racquet. this place feels to me today like a crime scene. get some of that yellow tape and put it around this chamber. the midnight transfer of wealth in this bill is disgusting. there's a backdrop here. the backdrop here is the wealth inquality in our country already in which the wealthiest 1% of our population owns 30% of the

wealth, and the poorest half of our population together only own 3% of the wealth. top 1% -- a third of the wealth. the bottom half of the population by income -- 3% of the wealth. and against that backdrop, this bill transfers wealth from middle-class families to giant corporations, billionaires, and megabillionaires. and it transfers wealth from our children and grandchildren to present-day billionaires by adding $5 trillion to the debt limit to run are up the debt of the -- to run up the debt of the country to fund the tax giveaways to these special interests and wealthy billionaires. how do they do that?

take away health care from 16 million americans. give huge tax breaks to billionaires. most families have someone sit down once a month and go through the bills, and you try to figure out what bills you can pay. you may not pay the whole insurance bill. you may just pay the minimum. you may not pay your whole credit card bill. you may just pay the minimum. you're aware exactly how much money you have because you need to make those payments. that's kitchen table world. billionaire world is different. you have a family office. you never see bills. you don't even know how much money you have, not even to the

nearest $100,000. and you don't care because you have more than you could ever spend in your life. you could pay taxes like regular people, but there's something about your acquisition of wealth that can't stop. so you won't pay taxes like a normal person. you demand special treatment. you pay less of a tax rate than a firefighter, for god's sake. and that's not enough for you. now you come here to this senate floor wanting even more favors? you already don't know how much money you have. you could pay regular taxes and it wouldn't take a day from sunning on your private island, a jet trip on your private jet, a ski trip to your favorite

chalet. nothing in your life would change if you had to pay taxes like a regular person, but you just don't want to. and the third is -- oh, i should add, on the tax breaks, a lot of it goes to corporations. this bill doesn't just give big tax breaks to big corporations. it gives big tax breaks to big corporations that move jobs and investment offshore away from america. and it just doesn't give tax breaks to corporations that move jobs and investment offshore away from america. it gives tax breaks for doing that. it gives tax breaks for offshoring american jobs and offshoring american investment. it is the world's worst tax policy. it takes an already corrupted tax code and bends it even

further in the favor of megabillionaires and big offshoring corporations. now, the last -- and last what does this bill do that causes this transfer of wealth from regular people to the wealthy? it raises your costs to raise their profits. i'm here to talk about one way that that hams. -- that that happens. because of this bill, your electric bills will go up. people behind this bill are counting on you not to know how that works. so i'm going to take a minute here and i'm going to tell you how that works. there's some rules for the grid. -- about how this works.

generators who want to sell power to the grid put in a bid, and they give a price at which they will sell their electricity. you can imagine on this graph that each of these little hashmarks is a different generation facility and each has made a bid at its best price. once it's got the stack of bids, the grid manager as the load comes on to the grid dispatches the cheap estrogen raters first -- cheapest generators first and it goes up to the more and more expensive ones. as demand rises, the costs go up. the last one that's called on, the most expensive one that's called on sets the price for the whole grid. and this last one, the one that the price setter on the grid,

almost always a fossil fuel plant. okay. it's almost always a fossil fuel plant. so if you look at this graph, you'll see here. this measures the price that's charged to put those electrons on the grid for consumers. and this is the energy demand. how much consumers are asking, what does the grid need to supply? and if you look at the top line, this is the world without renewables. this is an all fossil fuel system, let's say. base load, nuke, okay. throw that in. and as the demand goes up, the prices go up because more and more of these generators have to come online. and eventually let's say you get to this point where you've got this much load on the grid, and you've got this much supply and the price is set by that generator. that's the word without clean

energy. now you add clean energy. you add renewables to this equation. what do we know about the renewables? they're almost always cheaper. they're almost never the price setter. so they fill in down here and they fill in below the price of the fossil fuel plant. so if you've got load requirement x and you live in fossil fuel only world, you're going to be paying that price for energy on the grid, all of it because it's set by that price setter generator. but if you filled in with renewables, then you're down here for price for that much load. you're saving huge amounts of

money. the grid is way more efficient with renewables in the mix. by the time you get to the same price that you had here for load x for fossil fuel, you're all the way out here. you have all this extra load served before you raise that price. that's the theory. that's how the system works. let's see how clean energy fits in in a specific area. let's look at texas. oh, and by the way, last year 95% of the power that came on the grid that filled in here was clean energy. if this bill kills clean energy growth, which is its intention, then it's going to kill off the power source that provided 95% of what was added to the grid last year. it is going to be a big, big

hit. so let's look at the texas grid which is easy to talk about because it's a stand alone grid. and somebody just did a study of the texas grid. and they found that with renewables and texas is 30% renewables, okay, so we're in the width renewable situation. with renewables, the average price last august was $39 per megawatt hour. this was $39. and then they calculated what happened if you backed out all the solar that had been added. if it weren't for the solar driving this price down, instead of $39 per megawatt hour, it would have been somewhere

between $55 and $90 per megawatt hour. minimum $25 differential. maybe more than twice the cost. the punch line quoting from the report, had there been no growth in solar energy between 2018 and 2024, wholesale electric prices in 2024 would have been at least 40% higher. without the clean energy growth of that 95% of sup mrooi that came on -- supply that came on to the grid that was clean energy last year, electricity prices would have been ho% higher -- 40% higher. where would it have gone some to the pockets of the fossil fuel energy that was setting the price when you had to pay more and more. when you see the fossil fuel energy here and take the shot at

the clean energy competition in this bill after flooding that side with political money, they're going to make a fortune off of this and consumers, consumers will pay. that's how this bill robs you. it puts you back on to the fossil fuel side of that curve, not on to the clean energy added part of the curve which lowers prices so dramatically. and as the report concluded, i'm quoting again, this isn't speculation or modelling. it's what's actually happened in one of america's largest electricity markets. and by the way, while the fossil fuel polluters are out trying to damage their competition using the power of government and the influence of their dark money operation to do so, they're also

damaging america's competitiveness against china. china has already put 25 times the solar that we are putting on to their grid. that gives them huge advantages as they construct solar panels, design solar technologies, and offer that to the rest of the world. we're in a world market for solar technology, just like we're in a world market for electric vehicles. as the fossil fuel industry's desire to destroy the american solar market and to destroy the american electric vehicle market is about as unpatriotic as you can get because it is taking these two technologies and saying, go for it, china. we're out. we're out. have the entire international market for solar and for energy. we're for the going to compete. we're going to load up our people with new taxes. we're going to tear away the subsidies. and by the way, the fossil fuel

industry that's telling you this, they're the recipients of the biggest subsidy in world history. they get $700 billion a year in the united states alone from being allowed to pollute for free. it violates market economics to pollute for free. milton friedman, the most conservative economist will tell you it's not proper market theory when somebody's polluting for free. the cost of the pollution should be in the price of the product. so they already benefit. the fossil fuel industry already benefits from the biggest subsidy in world history. $700 billion with a b. $700 billion every single year to compete unfairly against clean energy, and on top of that, they want to rip away the investments that have been made and they want to put a new tax

on clean energy. and they want to drive consumer prices back up to their fossil fuel model. there's some really big losers in this big loser of a bill. anybody who cares about adding $5 trillion to our national debt, that's a big loss. come through in interest rates for people with car loans and home loans. health care, 16 million people getting chucked off their health care, hospitals and nursing homes facing receivership as their revenues dry up from a nearly trillion dollar hit to their revenue streams. taxpayers getting clobbered by an already corrupt tax code that this makes even worse for the individuals benefiting the most from the corruption of the tax code, and who are the least deserving of our solicitude and

who are the most able to pay. i promise you there are people who will not know they even got this $300,000 individual billionaire benefit because they're so rich already, it won't even count. and on the flip side of the coin, if they had to pay taxes like a normal american, they wouldn't even notice that either. they would still be able to sun on their island, cruise on their yachts, ski at their chalet and jet in their jet. yet we're breaking the bank to the tune of $5 trillion to take care of those people. creepy billionaires who can't even count their wealth but for some reason insist on coming to congress and just seizing even more, looting the public trough. offshoring corporations who get a special tax benefit for offshoring jobs and investment. moving them away from america.

remember this was the america first agenda? not when you look into the weeds of this crooked bill. so creepy billionaires. offshoring corporations. and of course fossil fuel polluters who want to pollute. they've got all the money in the world. they've made massive profits. they come do their own carbon removal and make their product safer. they choose not to. they choose not to because they want to pollute and they want to kill their competition so they can pollute more and profit more and drive up consumer prices as i showed here. and guess what? the greepy bill -- creepy bail theirs, shove shoring and polluters, what do they have in common? huge donors to the republican party. that's would this bill is about. it's not about taking care of the economy.

it's not about taking care of the public. it's payback to big special interests and billionaires who provide the dark money funding that floats the republican party and now they're demanding payback for the majorities that they bought. there is a wasp, mr. president, that lays its larvae inside another bug. and the larvae of the wasp inside the other bug are able to take over the nervous system of that other bug. they can take over the command and control system of the bug, and they start driving the bug around from the inside. they make it do what the larvae wants it to do. they make it go where the larvae want to be.

they make it hang where the larvae want it to hang. and then the larvae consume it from the inside. they eat it and they turn into the next generation of wasps. that's a pretty good analogy for what has happened here. those creepy billionaires, those fossil fuel polluters, those big offshoring corporations have taken over the command and control system of the republican party. the bug over there is being marched around by those special interests doing exactly what it's told. and it doesn't care about the 16 million people coming off insurance. doesn't care about the added pollution. doesn't care about the increased cost. doesn't care about the unfairness. doesn't care about making the tax code more corrupt. because the special interests are in that bug running that show. i yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from north carolina. mr. tillis: mr. president, i come today to explain my vote yesterday for voting against the motion to proceed on this bill. mr. president, i spent most of my career in management consulting, managing large, complex enterprise projects, multi-year, thousands of hours, a lot of commresty that -- complexity that take people, process and technology to make it work. i learned a lot in that career. and i was able to go to the legislature and take that mindset as a member of the minority for two terms, and then

we got a majority in 2010. and i found myself being the speaker of the house. mr. president, we were in the middle of the financial crisis. when i got sworn in in january of 2011, north carolina had a $2 billion shortfall on a $20 billion general revenue fund. and i had six months to balance that budget. well, mr. president, we did something that had not been done in north carolina. we took the time to understand every aspect and every dollar being spent in government. we determined how to cut government in a way that was sustainable. we cut 12% from the university system budget. not at the rate of growth, but the actual spending. i had some people say it was going to be disruptive and the university of north carolina would never be the same again. we did it i