Trump Executive Orders

Floor Speech

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Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, our economy, our hospitals, your mother's nursing home, your son's school lunch, your niece's afterschool program, our police, fire departments, our newborns, our elders, our veterans, pretty much everyone in my home State of New Mexico--President Trump threw them all into chaos with an unconstitutional and patently illegal power grab.

In an overnight maneuver that would make a dictator envious, President Trump unlawfully and unilaterally froze all Federal grant funding. He shut down the housing portal that nonprofits and Tribes in my home State use to access mortgage financing.

He literally shut down the Medicaid reimbursement portals across the country. Although after a day of raising hell over it, I think that Medicaid--at least the Medicaid portal in my State--may well be up and running again, at least for now.

And for context, almost a quarter of my State's budget actually moves through that portal--about $8 billion in Medicaid funding every single year in one small State alone.

He threw every town and county, Tribe, nonprofit, healthcare provider, school, and preschool into total disarray. And from our State's Roundhouse to the classroom, to the emergency room, today was chaos. People want answers. My phone has literally been ringing off the hook from people around the State who want answers, who want certainty.

Did Donald Trump just cut off funding for 7 out of 10 nursing home residents, for 55 percent of newborn births and New Mexico's doctors and New Mexico's hospitals? Did Donald Trump just deprive 7 out of 10 New Mexican children their daily lunch? Did Donald Trump just effectively close my child's preschool program?

The reality is that most of President Trump's own staff don't know or won't answer those questions just yet, and my Republican colleagues sure aren't jumping in to figure it out either.

One thing that is clear to me is the law. The President cannot override, delay, rescind Congress's appropriations laws once they are signed into law--full stop. This has been upheld time and again by the Supreme Court, by the Department of Justice, by the Government Accountability Office, and by the law--specifically, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Congress had to write and pass this law after President Nixon tried to withhold congressionally appropriated funds, and Nixon was wrong just like President Trump is wrong now.

We should all remember--especially my Republican colleagues who aren't here tonight, but really all of us--that elections swing both ways. We have seen the back and forth for the last few election cycles. Sometimes, your party is in charge of the White House; sometimes, it is not.

But think for a moment about what it would mean if the President--any President--could unilaterally cut off Federal funds that he or she didn't like. Sure, a conservative President could decide to cripple the Head Start programs in blue States, but it is every bit as true that a progressive President could decide to cripple the defense contracts or the military bases in red States.

That is not democracy; that is chaos. And today was just a small taste of that.

As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I know how much work goes into writing and passing our bipartisan funding laws. There have been times when I have been able to work with my Republican colleagues to pass appropriations bills out of committee unanimously, and I am not going to cede that to any administration to be abused.

Here is where I need help from my own constituent, help from New Mexicans. I want to hear from you about Donald Trump's blockade and how it is affecting you and your family. If your town's COPS grants get frozen, I need to know. If your VA mortgage gets held up, I need to know. If you are a nonprofit that is giving services in the area of violence against women, refuges for people who are battered, and your funding gets held up, these are the stories that I think need to be held up to understand just what is happening in our country right now.

And I hope that all of us--not just Democrats, but Republicans as well--who have a vested interest in being able to create certainty in our own States, certainty for the economy, certainty for the small business community, can come together and say that this is not what democracy looks like.

Let's create that certainty. Let's follow the law. Let's make sure that whatever we agree to here in this amazing Capitol, that not only passes both Chambers but gets signed into law by the President of the United States, that we abide by that, because only if we all agree to color inside the lines and to act like this is a democracy will this remain a democracy.

And I just want to say to my own constituents how sorry I am that they are going through this right now because the amount of anguish and uncertainty--and, you know, I had heard from a Tribal housing program today that said: You know, we won't be able to make payroll in a few days if this is how this is going to be.

And you can tell story after story like that of just huge clouds hanging over people who are just trying to do a good job for their communities and provide services and do their jobs. That is not how you grow the economy.

I want to thank all of my colleagues who have come to the floor to talk about this. We are all getting story after story from our States. We need to lift those up, and we need to say that we need to put this chapter behind us for the benefit of the American people.

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