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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, Donald Trump is sending $20 billion not to America but to Argentina. Donald Trump is sending $20 billion to Argentina to bail out their economy, and he wants to spend $50 billion to clean up the mess that he made by starting a trade war that crushed American soybean producers.

Let's be clear about what happened. It is not that the market is temporarily suspended. That market, in some cases, is gone. And during this period of time with--$20 billion for the country of Argentina and $50 billion for a tariff bailout--Americans are paying more for absolutely everything. Healthcare premiums for tens of millions of people are going to go up by a lot--not 10 percent, not 20 percent, not 50 percent--114 percent; 24 million Americans, 114 percent.

The bailout for Argentina is particularly absurd. Argentina is not a key security or economic partner. It is an economy that is in such dire shape that there is no guarantee that we will ever get our money back. It is a terrible investment any way you look at it under any circumstances but certainly in the context of Americans seeing their healthcare premiums increase by 114 percent right now.

You then have a separate bailout for American soybean producers totaling close to $50 billion. And why? Because of the tariffs; because in one fell swoop, they wiped out half of the export market for American soybeans in China, and there is no way you can plug that gap. You can't come up with--I don't know what it would be--112 individual deals to kind of add up to the market-buying power of the PRC.

When you lose a buyer that also happens to be the biggest country in the world, you don't have a lot of options. At best, it is going to take you months or years to cut dozens of smaller deals, and it is not going to add up.

Just to recap, Trump is at the exact same time incinerating $70 billion of taxpayer money. But what is the one thing that there is not enough money for? You. There is not enough money for you. There is enough money for a $50 billion tariff bailout; there is enough money for Argentina; but there is not enough money for you.

They don't have enough money to help a family of four that is going to have to pay $300 more per month to keep their healthcare plan. They have the money to cover for Trump's economic incompetence, but, apparently, they don't have the money to prevent a small business owner or a taxi driver or an early retiree from losing their healthcare.

This is not complicated at all. Donald Trump's economy is already hard as it is because of his choices to create shortages of electricity, of lumber, of food, of healthcare. Electricity prices are going up at twice the rate of inflation. Vegetables are up nearly 40 percent. Grocery prices are at their highest in 3 years now. People are supposed to find hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to spare every single month or give up their healthcare coverage and hope they don't get sick.

We could end this shutdown right now if Republicans sat down and worked with us to protect people's healthcare. By the way, the people who are being particularly hurt by these healthcare premium increases live in Republican States. Now, that shouldn't matter, but we are in politics. Just understand, we are standing here fighting for your constituents. If we were a little more cynical, we would let you stew in the most unpopular major legislation that has been passed in generations. But we want to solve this problem, not just for the 24 million people on the so-called exchange but for everybody who is about to see their premiums spike. Let's sit down and fix this.

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