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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, Donald Trump is powerful, but he is not all-powerful. It is true that he is trying to consolidate power in illegal and dangerous ways, but it is also true that he is often failing to do that because of public opinion, because of markets, because of institutions, and because of the law itself.

I want to give a couple of recent examples. Two weeks ago, shortly after Trump and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr threatened to punish ABC if it didn't suspend Jimmy Kimmel's show, the network announced that it was taking the show off the air indefinitely. So at first, the public coercion seemed to work. Brendan Carr had said, point blank:

We can do this the easy way or [we can do this] the hard way.

And the network caved. But a swift and searing backlash quickly followed. Consumers revolted. People began canceling their subscriptions.

Disney's market cap fell by close to $6.5 billion in a matter of days. Artists, advertisers, and employees spoke out. Even Republicans in the Senate denounced the move.

My Senate colleague Ted Cruz called it ``dangerous as hell":

I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we're going to decide what speech we like and what speech we don't, and we're going to threaten to take you off [the] air if we don't like what you're saying.

Criticizing your own party's administration is hard. I understand that. But this is not about whether you are left or right or whether you thought Jimmy Kimmel's comment was insensitive or not. It is about the basic question of ``Are we allowed to speak freely in the country without fear that the government is going to come after us?'' because, if not, that is not the America that any of us recognize.

Here is another example. Last week, Trump installed a loyalist with no experience as prosecutor as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and within days, the office indicted former FBI Director James Comey on charges without much evidence at all.

And the case is so absurd that they couldn't even get a single career prosecutor to take it on. So, instead, the newly installed interim U.S. attorney had to sign and present the indictment herself in a highly unusual move. One of the charges was rejected by the grand jury almost immediately.

Now, why does that matter? It is, without a doubt, a dark day for the country when the President of the United States uses the Justice Department to prosecute political opponents. But legal experts widely expect this case to fail before it even gets to trial. And that, too, will be a reminder that while this President is powerful, he is not all-powerful. This isn't a free-for-all. He doesn't get to just do whatever he wants.

That brings me to this debate about government funding. Democrats are out of power, but we are not powerless, and our price is not that high. We have been asking Republicans, for over a month, to sit down and negotiate. I have been here 13\1/2\ years. We have never passed an appropriations bill without negotiation.

But Trump literally told his party: ``Don't even bother dealing with them.'' And so it took them until today, on the eve of a shutdown, for a meeting.

And the House is out of town. The House adjourned until after the funding deadline expires. They were going to come back on October 1, which is already 24 hours too late. Now they are thinking October 7.

If you are serious about a deal, if you are serious about keeping the government open, why are you not in the U.S. Capitol?

Russ Vought, in July, the OMB Director, said: You know, the appropriations process should be less bipartisan.

The person in charge of the Federal Government in the executive branch is pretty explicit. He says: The appropriations process should not involve Democrats at all.

The only way to keep the government open is for both parties to negotiate a bipartisan agreement. If the Republicans want to listen to Donald Trump and say, ``Don't even bother dealing with the Democrats,'' then there is a very old adage and an iron law in politics, which is: If you don't ask for the vote, you do not get the vote.

We are ready to work together to keep this government open, and I want everybody to understand what we are fighting for--what we are fighting for. Tens of millions of Americans are getting letters in the mail, and they don't know they are on the Affordable Care Act exchange. What the hell is that anyway? They just sign up for healthcare on a website, right? You don't know if you are on Obamacare or some hybrid thing or employer or this or that. You just get a letter from your insurer, and they say: If you want to reenroll in your healthcare plan, here is how much it will be. It is usually like a small increase, year over year, to cover inflation.

So now they are going to get a letter that literally says: Your subsidies are gone, and your new price is x. The average increase is going to be hundreds of dollars per person per month. Add to that that we are hearing in some States, and maybe as a result of some job owning with the administration, they are waiting to send those letters. They are waiting to send those letters. Why? Because they are hoping we are going to resolve this ACA tax credit thing, and they don't want to eat, politically speaking, the fact that a bunch of people, tens of millions of people--Democrats, Republicans, Independents, nonvoters, but zero noncitizens--zero noncitizens--you are not eligible to be on the exchange if you are a noncitizen--are going to get a letter saying: You know it is going to be $3,000 or $4,000 more per year.

Like, go talk to a regular person. Some of us know regular people who are on that exchange and know: I just can't do it--$300 dollars more per month. And, by the way, if you get that letter in December and your first payment is due on January 1, you are extra screwed.

So I understand that the White House understands how big of a political liability this is because people are really going to get hurt. And now it is a question of sort of people wanting to not behave as though they are giving in.

But let's be adults here. There is a crisis that is about to happen to tens of millions of Americans, and we have an opportunity to fix it, and there is bipartisan desire to fix it. And Leader Thune and Speaker Johnson's view is: Nah, we will deal with that later. And Donald Trump was saying: Why don't we deal with that next year?

By next year, all of the rates are locked in, and people will be paying $300 or $400 or $500 more per person per month.

We can fix this, and we should.

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