TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDERS

TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDERS

Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 18 (Tuesday, January 28, 2025) [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 18 (Tuesday, January 28, 2025)] [Senate] [Pages S438-S439] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDERS Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, if it weren't for a judge's temporary administrative stay, we would still be in the middle of Trump's pointless and illegal shutdown right now. Federal funding for a whole host of things would be frozen, meaning people all over the country who count on the Federal Government wouldn't get help. All of us--all 100 of us--got calls from back home, saying: What the heck is going on? VA home loans are being shut down. The Medicaid portal is being shut down. The Head Start portal is being shut down. Construction projects are being shut down. All because the Trump administration believes that it doesn't have to follow the appropriations law. Now, lots of us disagree about the size and the scope of the government. Lots of people vote no on the appropriations law. Fine. But once it is the law, the legislative branch sends it to the President of the United States. The President either signs it or vetoes it. In this case, President Biden signed the appropriations law. There is no provision in the statute and there is no provision in the Constitution that permits a President to pick and choose the spending that he prefers. That just doesn't exist in the law. The article I branch has one most foundational power in terms of the three branches of government being separate and coequal. ``Coequal'' is kind of a funny way of saying it, but it is important to think of these three branches as in constant struggle against each other for power. Our power is the power of the purse. Our power is the power to enact appropriations bills, to determine the level of Federal spending on various programs. But what the Trump White House did today was announce by fiat: We are not going to fund disaster relief. We are not going to fund public housing. We are not going to fund rural health care or foster care or opioid treatment or highway and rail projects or wildfire containment or cancer research or clean energy initiatives--all of it gone in an instant and, in this case, only for an instant because Donald Trump woke up yesterday and decided he no longer wanted to fund some of the most basic things that the Federal Government supports. Again, this really isn't about arguing about the merits of each individual [[Page S439]] program, although I don't know who is against allowing highway repairs to continue. I don't know who is against allowing Medicaid-funded nursing homes to continue. I don't know who is against allowing someone who has been waiting for their VA home loan to be able to close on that loan. But it is really not about that. It is about a more basic question, which is, Are we a nation of laws? Are we going to allow ourselves to turn into a monarchy? I want to harken back to something I mentioned earlier today. The White House Press Secretary was asked about a specific program, and she said: Well, they should talk to Russell Vought. Russell Vought is the nominee to be the OMB Director, the Office of Management and Budget. There are a couple of things wrong with this. First of all, it is not his call whether or not to spend the money; the Congress already decided that. Second of all, even more creepy than that, this guy has not been confirmed. He is not a government employee. He is not in charge of anything. And we are supposed to, like, petition this person to beg him to follow the law. This is the beginning of a long battle over a couple of most basic questions. First, are we going to allow this administration to just cause pain all across the country--every State, every county, school lunches, VA loans, construction projects? You name it. Are we going to allow this President to just do this because he feels like it? The second question is not about the projects themselves or the programs themselves or even the people they help it is about who are we as a Congress. When we swear an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States, is that just the thing we do before they give us the pen and the pin that say ``United States Senator''? You know, you stand right there, and you swear yourself in. They give you a little pen that says ``United States Senator.'' You look at it, and you go: I am a U.S. Senator. But the important part wasn't when they gave you your election certificate. It wasn't when they handed you your pen. It wasn't when they give you this pin here that says ``United States Senate.'' It is when you swear that oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States of America. And the Constitution and laws of the United States of America make it very, very clear: We are not a constitutional monarchy; we are a democracy. What the court did today is important because it stopped a lot of pain all the way across the country--personal economic pain, family economic pain, macroeconomic pain from shutting down construction projects and business operations and all the rest of it. But it is more foundational than that. We have to establish some boundaries here that go beyond our partisan boundaries. We have to establish that enough is enough; that you might have your view about the size and the scope of the Federal Government and you might have your view about the previous President or the previous election campaign, but the law is the law here, and we are not going to allow any President, any administration, at any time to disobey the law in this flagrant of a fashion. One final thought. There will be a Democratic President at some point, and if this becomes the precedent, I promise you, if you are a U.S. Senator on the Republican side, you are going to hate this. You are going to hate the idea that a progressive President can reach into the defense budget or the VA budget or the Department of Commerce's budget and just say: You know what, I don't want to fund that. I am going to plus-up this and defund that. That is not the way the Federal system is supposed to work. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island. ____________________