mr. merkley: i would the senator yield to a question? mrs. murray: i would. mr. merkley: during the time you were budget chair, did you ever contemplate a situation in which you argued that renewing a tax break that was by law expiring would somehow have no impact on the deficit? mrs. murray: i never would have contemplated and i never would have put it forward, and i happen to know if that i had suggested that that my republican colleagues would have been all over me, telling me that breaks the rules. mr. merkley: thank you. thank you very much. we're turning to senator whitehouse, who was budget chair from 2023 to 2025. mr. whitehouse: thank you, senator merkley. i mentioned earlier the history of the section that the republican budget chairman is using to perform this multitrillion-dollar magical act of making huge deficit-busting numbers disappear. it's called section 312. it has been used before, but it has always been minor, corrective, and bipartisan. i mentioned earlier the adjustment that was made on a bipartisan basis to the power marketing administratio

mr. merkley: mr. president, i hear an objection from my friend and colleague, the head of the banking committee, but would my friend and colleague explain while we are on a cryptocurrency bill debate to honor the emoluments clause of the constitution. mr. scott: my good friend on the other side of this issue -- the presiding officer: the senator from south carolina is recognized. mr. scott: thank you, mr. president. i think it's clear that the underlying consumption is that there is something nefarious going on and i object the aspersion to the president of the united states particularly given the fact that this is the party that had cocaine in the white house, that had a problem with biden's, hunter biden's laptop. my point is i'm not going to cast aspersions on the president of the united states without any clear evidence that any law has been broken, and i do not believe that there has been. mr. merkley: to my colleague -- the presiding officer: the senator from oregon is recognized. mr. merkley: t

mr. merkley: mr. president. the presiding officer: i recognize the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: thank you. i want to share a couple comments with my colleagues, including republican colleagues, because i've made these points on the floor, and generally the floor is empty. some of you are here now. in 1974, 100 senators agreed on reconciliation as a fast track filibuster free, but only for reducing the deficit. it had three pillars, reduce the deficit over a ten-year period. second, reduce the deficit in each year after that ten-year period, in each title of the bill. third, use honest numbers. in 1996, the republican team was in the majority and decided on a nuclear option to allow that reconciliation process to be used to increase deficits in the ten-year window. that was unfortunate because it destroyed the agreement all 100 senators agreed to in 1974. but now today if we proceed with this current policy baseline there's other pillars you are destroying. the second pillar was no deficits after the ten-year period. that's being destroyed. and the third was to use honest

mr. merkley: mr.resident. once again, republicans have chosen partisan politics. zero federal dollars are spent on health coverage. second, this policy dictates how states spend their own funds. what happens to states' rights? third, this policy violates innocent until proven guilty, but most importantly, what this amendment says is that if one person, despite state law, through a bureaucratic mistake is receiving funds, then the whole state pays the price and has to change from 90% to 80%. this includes a majority of republican states to reduce the match from 90% to 08% with huge impact on individuals across this country. haven't we done enough damage to the fundamental principle of health care by reducing the state funding by 90% to 80%? i renew my point of order. the presiding officer: the senator from texas. cornyn pursuant to section 904 of the congressional budget act of 1974, i move to waive and consider for the -- and ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient seco

mr. merkley: mr. president. prop i recognize the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: in grade school, my dad, the mechanic pointed to the schoolhouse doors and said, son, if you go through those doors and work hard, you can do anything, because we're so fortunate to live in the united states. was a big fan of public schools, giving an opportunity for every child to thrive. i took his advice to heart, and went through those doors and studied hard and loved the vision of opportunity for every child in america. the fact is that many careers require more than k-12 education. and the cost of college has exploded. when i was graduating from high school, if you worked a summer job at minimum wage, which was about $3 an hour, you could save enough money living at home to pay your tuition at any of the public universities in the state of oregon. well, try paying your tuition to today. a year of tuition, based on minimum wage working the summer. we are in a situation where college is so much more important now than it was decades ago, to so many parts of opportunity in

mr. merkley: mr. president. the presiding officer: i recognize the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are not. mr. merkley: thank you, mr. president. i've come to the floor to talk about debt and the challenge that confronts us. over the last few decades we've seen a lot of sources of red ink. among them are the war in afghanistan, the war in iraq. we saw the first bush tax bill in 2001, massive red ink. 2003, massive red ink. trump's tax bill in 2017, an ocean of red ink. i don't think anyone here would argue that is decisions didn't result in significant deficits and significant additions to the debt. and yet there's so much conversation here about fiscal responsibility and let's get this under control, and yet we see time and time again this body vote under republican leadership for another ocean of red ink, another massive deficit adding to an already bloated debt that so profoundly compromises the ability of our nation to address issues in the next generation. we're borrowing from the next generation, making it less likel

mr. merkley: mr. president, i have witnessed starvation up close. in calcutta, and the room had a series of cots filled with men. there was a men's side, a woman's side. i wasas on the men's side. and many of the men, the priest told me, had come after they had reached a point of malnutrition on the s streets to which they d been -- to which they had collapsed, a and ias asked to tend to one young man, and his eyes were very bright. and i asked the priest it appears like he's really focused. he said, no, no, no. he said this young man has been starving to death, his body has started to damage his own organs, there is no recovery,, all w can do is minister to his comfort. that meant taking sections of grapefruit and wiping them across his lips. i also visited a refugee center until south sudan, where the level of malnutrition was measured by an arm band. it was a quick way to understand how little food they had. it's color coded. green to yellow too red to aid rkers can see the sefrt of the malnutrition, the extent of the impact of starvation. mr. me

mr. merkley: joining me on the floor are experts in the budget process, former chairs and ranking members, senator murray, who has been senate budget chair from 2013 to 2015. senator white house, senate budget chair 2023-225. senator van hollen, the ranking democrat on the house budget committee in 2011 through 2017. we're here to address a fundamental violation of the law, of law 313, section 313. and it is the set of rules for reconc reconciliation. to try to summarize this in the simplest words possible, 100 senators voted to have a special fast truck, filibuster-free pathway solely for reducing the debt. first principle, no deficits could be created in a ten-year period. our republican colleagues blew that up in 1996 when they wanted to create a tax bill that would create massive deficits. a second pillar was no deficits in any bill after the first ten years. if this passes now, that p blows that up. the third was use honest numbers, congressional budget office numbers. i have a letter here from the congressional budget office and they say the estimate is relative to cbo's january 202

mr. merkley: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon is recognized. mr. merkley: i appeal the ruling of the chair and ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. there are now two minutes of debate equally divided. the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: i ask the cbo letter of june 29 to the ranking member of the budget committee being submitted for the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. merkley: in this letter, it notes that the baseline was proposed, the alternative baseline based on a request made by the chairman of the senate committee on the budget. but the letter goes on to say this -- the cbo estimates that enacting this title would increase the deficit by nearly $3.5 trillion over the 2025-34 period. clearly, that amount done by honest numbers from cbo exceeds the budget resolution level and, therefore, we should not affirm the ruling of the chair. it is said in this ruling i just heard that precedent provides a foundation for this. but in fact the ability of the chair to cr

mr. merkley: mr. president. the presiding officer: i recognize the -- mr. crapo: mr. president. the presiding officer: i recognize the senator from idaho. mr. crapo: let me thank senator graham for his very kind words. i return the same kind of compliments to him for his great work in helping to build this bill and get us moved to this point. i'm going to make just a few remarks right now in response to some of the allegations and m mischaracterizations my colleagues on the other side made about how this bill has been structured in terms of evaluation and scoring. then later i'm going to give a much longer speech, sorry, sir, on the bill itself. the things said this morning have to be responded to. first, it was said that the reason we are going to increase the debt ceiling in the bill is because we are spending so much money and driving the deficit up. first, our bill drives the deficit down, not up. secondly, the reason we're dealing with the debt ceiling in the bill is because under the previous administration's operations, the debt ceiling has already been breached. it was b

mr. merkley: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from from oregon. mr. merkley: i ask consent to -- vin since for june 24, 20e 25, and emma singleton for july 24, 2025. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. merkley: thank you, mr. president. i've come to the floor to talk about debt. and more precisely how the republican party has been driving massive increases in debt over the last couple decades. both in two ways. the first way is by particular legislative acts primarily tax bills that have created enormous debt. and the second is by steadily eroding the framework for budgeting and controlling our difference between our revenues and our expenditures that was created in 1974. if we want to think about the big factors that have been driving up deficits and therefore debt, the big factors in recent history, war in afghanistan, massive. war in iraq, massive. the bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. the trump tax cuts of 2017. these were huge factors in vastly reducing revenue primarily by giving enorous giveaways -- enormous giveaways to the very richest

mr. merkley: i've come to the floor to say i'm extremely outraged that the executive branch's security team have shoved a u.s. senator out of a room, have proceeded to put that u.s. senator on the ground and to handcuff that senator. this is what we expect to see in an authoritarian nation that can't tolerate a question, and they start to attack the institutions. what we're seeing in the u.s. right now, we're seeing in the form of the president willfully breaking the law on the rules controlling the executive branch time and time again. we see it in his attack on the press, his attack on the universities, his attack on extorting law firms. we 00 it in the form -- we see it in the form of him using the trump v. the united states lawsuit to say i, the united states president, can use executive orders to avert the law. that's not the way it works in a republic. at least that's not the way it works if we are a republic. if we, through a subservient congress and the combination with the deferential supreme court, slide into this authoritarian state, then we have failed our oath to the constituti

mr. merkley: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. rkley: i thank my colleague from massachusetts for laying out how families lose and billionaires win on this not so beautiful bill that trump has put forward. it's really a big beautiful betrayal. betrayal because trump campaigned for helping families, but as we've seen with the details in the end, this is about helping billionaires. the bottom 20%, the less affluent, they get tax benefits of about $90 a year. somebody who earns a billion dollars gets $90,000 a year tax benefit, $90,000 for a well-off individual and $90 for an ordinary family struggling to get on its feet. mr. president, let me talk about a different aspect of the reconciliation bill, but before i do so, my heart is with the people of minnesota who have lost melissa and mark hortman. melissa is a former speaker of the house in oregon, i know the type of effort that goes into coordinating a legislative session, striving to build a better state, the state -- a better state of minnesota and melissa and mark are no longer

mr. merkley: thank you very much.e to the floor tonight to talk about fiscal responsibility and how important it is that we preserve or the least advance a structure in which we engage with integrity in budgeting so we don't run up massive debts that affect the opportunities for the generation to come. one of the things i've been very aware of during the 17 years i've been here is that i hear a lot of conversation from my colleagues across the aisle about fiscal responsibility. but let's be clear. the majority of the debt runup over the last 20 years has come from the republican side of the aisle. it's been the war in afghanistan, the war in iraq. those alone account for $8 trillion. and if we turn the clock back just a little bit more, we had the 2001 bush tax cuts. the 2003 bush tax cuts. the 2017 trump tax cut. each of them producing an ocean of red ink by cutting taxes for the richest americans. is that any way to run a country? cutting programs for families to fund tax breaks for megamillionaires and billionaires

mr. merkley: i've come to the floor to say i'm extremely outraged that the executive branch's security team have shoved a u.s. senator out of a room, have proceeded to put that u.s. senator on the ground and to handcuff that senator. this is what we expect to see in an authoritarian nation that can't tolerate a question, and they start to attack the institutions. what we're seeing in the u.s. right now, we're seeing in the form of the president willfully breaking the law on the rules controlling the executive branch time and time again. we see it in his attack on the press, his attack on the universities, his attack on extorting law firms. we 00 it in the form -- we see it in the form of him using the trump v. the united states lawsuit to say i, the united states president, can use executive orders to avert the law. that's not the way it works in a republic. at least that's not the way it works if we are a republic. if we, through a subservient congress and the combination with the deferential supreme court, slide into this authoritarian state, then we have failed our oath to the constituti

merkley. >> thank you very much, mr.hairman, and welcome, attorney general, and i'm sorry i wasn't here for the whole hearing so if it's been addressed, but i think you really are very sensitive to the possibility of foreign agents or foreign influence on our government and making sure that we make sure that doesn't happen. >> yes. >> i want to know if when the president held his dinner for 220 individuals who purchased the most of his meme coins, were there foreign interests attending that dinner? >> senator, we're here to talk about the department of justice and my budget for the upcoming year. i would think that you would want to talk about the leader of the sinaloa cartel who was living in oregon, one of the top leaders, i would think that that's what you would want to talk about with me. when we captured him, he had $3 million cash in his home. >> attorney general, i know that you avoided the same question on the house side. but what we know is that many folks who attended this dinner were buying those coins because

merkley. >> thank you, mr. chairman. it is a pleasure to work with you when you were in your senate capacity on a number of human rights issues. i think it is a standard and strategy that i hope will spread to other countries to reject goods made by slave labor in china. today, i want to wrestle a bit with another, what i consider to be a humanitarian tragedy. the conditions in gaza. i very much supported israel going after hamas following october 7. but, we are now well over a year and a half into this and there's a new phase of events which i will try to summarize. six month ago, the finance minister said israel should then the population through voluntary migration. he also used the term encourage migration. these terms are considered a euphemism for forced displacement and the strategies of forced migration our food denial, the demolition of homes, and driving people from one area in the gaza strip south to the southern side. and then, there is a new plan called operation gideon 's chariot. netanyahu said we are goin

mr. merkley, no. the clerk: mr. kim, no. the clerk: ms. warren, no. the clerk: mr. crapo, aye. mr. reed, no. the clerk: mr. mullin, aye. mr. murphy, no. the clerk: mr. booker, no. mr. curtis, aye. mr. gallego, no. the clerk: ms. cortez masto, no. ms. hassan, no. mr. kennedy, aye. ms. hirono, no. mr. mcconnell, aye. the clerk: mr. cassidy, aye. mr. hawley, aye. mr. cornyn, aye. the clerk: ms. klobuchar, no. the clerk: ms. slotkin, no. the clerk: mr. grassley, aye. mr. graham, aye. the clerk: mr. bennet, no. ms. duckworth, no. the clerk: mr. budd, aye. mr. paul, no. the clerk: ms. alsobrooks, no. mr. johnson, no. the clerk: mr. peters, no. the clerk: ms. ernst, aye. the clerk: mr. markey, no. mr. wicker, aye. mr. risch, aye. the clerk: ms. smith, no. mr. padilla, no. ms. collins, aye. mr. mccormick, aye. the clerk: mr. tuberville, aye. mr. sanders, no. mr. hoeven, aye. mrs. gillibrand, no. mr. banks, aye. vote: the clerk: mr. moran, aye.