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Floor Speech

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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I very much appreciate the Reverend Senator Warnock and his reminder that questions about voting in America are moral questions, they are historic questions, and they are questions about our democracy. I am grateful for his leadership on this, and I hope all of us have a chance--if we didn't get to hear the speech the first time around, that we will get to replay it and listen to what he has to say.

Donald Trump is trying to stop American citizens from voting. Why? Because he knows that his agenda is unpopular and that Republicans can't win based on what he is doing, so he wants to rig the election by picking his own voters. That is what the SAVE Act is all about.

Don't let Trump and the Republicans in Congress fool you. They will say things like: Hey, you should have to show an ID to vote just like you have to do to buy a beer.

But this is not an ordinary voter ID bill. This is not a bill that says everybody either has to show a driver's license or a student ID to vote. This is a way to keep American citizens from voting, and I will just give you one example of this.

If this bill passes, then in 45 of the 50 States, your driver's license won't count as a valid ID. And then it gets better. Let's say you are a married woman who lives in Massachusetts. Let's say that when you got married, you took your husband's name. Well, when you go to the polls to vote, you can't register by showing them your updated driver's license. Why? Because Massachusetts is one of the 45 States where a driver's license does not prove citizenship.

So you bring along your birth certificate. It shows you were born in the United States. Can you vote now? Nope. Your birth certificate is still under your maiden name.

So, yes, you can use a passport if you have one, but, remember, fewer than half of all Americans have a passport, and it costs $165 to get one, and it takes a month or two if everything is working on time.

No passport and no birth certificate that matches your driver's license--well, Trump and the Republicans say you are just out of luck. And that is just one example of how this bill will actually make it harder for Americans to vote.

Here is another deeply disturbing thing about this bill. It would require States to hand over sensitive information about voters to Trump's Department of Homeland Security so that some shadowy guys can do whatever they want with it. Maybe they take you off the voters rolls. Maybe they use that information for something else. The point is, nobody really knows what will happen.

This is an Agency whose former leader, Kristi Noem, said just a few weeks ago:

[W]e need to . . . make sure that we have the right people voting.

So just make a guess who is going to get swept off the voter rolls. People that the Republicans think are likely to vote Democratic. So sweep off Black people. Sweep off Brown people. Sweep off women. Sweep off students. Sweep off people in precincts that voted Democratic last time. Sweep off people that you think might vote Democratic in the upcoming election.

I have heard this bill called Jim Crow 2.0, hearkening back to the days in the South when the South blocked Black people from being able to vote with a whole series of tests and barriers so that they just wouldn't have a chance to vote. The Trump bill is Jim Crow 2.0.

Noncitizen voting is extremely rare in America, and the Republicans know that. They have seen the same data that we have. Voter roll audits in Georgia prior to the 2024 election found only 20 registered noncitizens out of 8.2 million registered voters. That is 0.00024 percent. A 2024 Michigan audit found only 16 noncitizen votes out of 5.7 million votes. That is 0.00028 percent.

So then what is going on? Why are the Republicans doing this? Why are they chewing up all of this time in the U.S. Senate to do this? Well, we don't have to guess because the Republicans have been saying the quiet part out loud.

Republicans in Congress know that they are in deep trouble for the midterms unless they can rig the rules and pick their own voters. Donald Trump even said it himself. He said passing the SAVE Act will ``guarantee the midterms,'' because the Republicans know and Donald Trump knows that the policies they are shoving through right now are wildly unpopular.

So while Trump and Republicans try to spread conspiracies and lie about the SAVE Act, it is important that each and every one of us stays focused on what the Trump administration is really doing. Iran

Mr. President, here is what the Trump administration is really doing: After promising no more wars, Donald Trump has dragged the United States into an illegal and reckless war with Iran. That is lie No. 1. Already, at least 200 American servicemembers have been hurt, and 13 servicemembers have lost their lives. There are American lives lost and families grieving because Donald Trump dragged us into a war based on lies, a war launched without an imminent threat to our country and without any end in sight.

When he ran for President, Trump promised no wars. In fact, he kept saying he would be the ``President of peace.'' He lied.

The United States is spending at least $1 billion a day on the war with Iran. If we put the money we are using at war with Iran toward healthcare, we could lower costs for millions of Americans.

Just this week, Donald Trump's own Energy Secretary said out loud:

We were very aware that we would cause a little bit of increased prices on Americans.

Think about that. Trump and his top officials knew that this war would raise costs for Americans, and they did it anyway.

In just the first 6 days of the war, the Trump administration spent an estimated $11.3 billion. That was in 6 days. We also lost three F-15 aircraft in just those first few days. That will cost us another $300 million. Estimates say that the Trump administration has kept burning about 1 billion taxpayer dollars a day on the war in Iran, and now we are on day 18. Some estimates look more like $2 billion a day. That is over $23,000 every second, something like $11.5 million since I started this speech.

So let's look at Trump's warmongering by the numbers. Mr. President, $11.3 billion, the estimated cost of the first 6 days of Trump's war; $5.6 billion, the cost of munitions spent by the Pentagon in the first 2 days of the war; $300 million, the cost to replace the three F-15s lost to friendly fire in the first week of the war; $50 billion, how much the Trump administration says it wants to add to an already massively inflated defense budget to pay for a war that was never authorized by Congress; $1 trillion, the Pentagon's budget this year; $1.5 trillion, the total amount Trump is reportedly requesting for the Pentagon budget for next year. That means Republicans in Congress want to increase the Pentagon's budget by $500 billion.

To put these numbers in context, the Trump administration will spend $30 billion in just the first 30 days of the war. That is exactly how much we could have used to lower costs for millions of people for an entire year--people who got knocked off their healthcare or saw their premiums go up because of Trump's healthcare cuts. So instead of going to war with Iran, we could lower healthcare costs and actually save lives here at home.

Here is one more: $12 billion--a number we have already passed--$12 billion is what it would cost to restore the expanded child tax credit for 1 year. So in less than 2 weeks of Donald Trump's war, we spent the same amount of money that would have lifted millions of kids out of poverty.

For the same amount the United States is burning on just 1 single day of Donald Trump's reckless war with Iran, we could provide a full year's worth of food assistance for nearly half a million Americans or Medicaid coverage for 300,000 children.

But there is more we could have done with the $12 billion the Trump administration has spent on war with Iran. We could have provided housing assistance for around 1 million Americans. We could have lowered prescription drug costs for tens of millions of people. We could have paid the entire National Park Service for more than 3 years. We could have given Pell grants to 1.6 million students so they could afford to go to college. We could have provided retirement and disability pay for veterans wounded in combat and still had plenty of money left over. We could have helped pay the salaries of more than 100,000 teachers and nurses--2 jobs that are crucial, and where we have seen shortages. We could have funded Direct File, the program that lets Americans file their taxes online and for free. We could have funded that for two whole decades. We could have provided humanitarian assistance for countries around the world for almost 3 full years. That is a huge amount of money.

And I want to talk about one more thing we could be spending taxpayer money on instead of Trump's reckless war in Iran: making childcare more affordable for families.

Here is the thing: People have been getting childcare all wrong. Childcare costs are painfully high. Right now, families are having to choose between breaking the budget, being forced to cut back on work hours, or settling for lower quality care just to ensure that their kids have a safe place to be while the parents are working. In 49 of the 50 States, families pay more for childcare for their two kids than they do for rent.

And the reason why costs are so high is that, right now, people think of childcare as a privilege or as a service that is for sale. That is wrong. We should be thinking of universal childcare as basic public infrastructure. We should be thinking about it the same way we think about roads and highways. Why? Because, for this country to work, we need to care for our kids. And when parents don't have childcare, they can't go to work.

Investing in universal childcare is also good for our kids' development, and it is good for our economy. We need affordable childcare just as much as we need schools to educate our workers and bridges to connect goods to the market. It is basic infrastructure to make this country run. It is the infrastructure we need to thrive. And, up until now, our Nation just hasn't been thinking about childcare that way. This is why we need to invest in childcare for every family.

It is just basic supply and demand. There are a whole bunch of families that need childcare, but there are a whole lot fewer childcare workers. Normally, when we want to attract more workers to an area, we just pay them more. But childcare prices are already sky high, and families just can't afford it. So where does that leave us? There is a huge gap that the Federal Government needs to fill.

Imagine: If the Federal Government didn't invest in roads and bridges, we just wouldn't have them.

And that is what is happening with childcare, and it is why we need to invest in universal childcare and raise wages for childcare workers. They should at least make the same amount as local public schoolteachers.

In the wealthiest country on this planet, access to affordable, high- quality childcare and early childhood education should not be a privilege reserved for the rich; it should be a right.

But instead of talking about lowering childcare costs, Donald Trump is delivering a punch to the gut to every parent struggling with those costs. Donald Trump is spending billions of dollars a week bombing Iran for reasons he cannot explain, but he cannot find a nickel to help the millions of people who are struggling to pay for healthcare, groceries, or childcare.

But this is a one-two punch. The Trump administration is spending a tremendous amount of money on war, and the war is also driving up costs for Americans.

Take the price of gasoline over the past month. For months, Donald Trump has been saying gas prices are going down. He has been loud and proud about it. Right now, the average price for gas is more than $3.70 a gallon, more than 80 cents higher per gallon than just 1 month ago, when Donald Trump started this war. That is more than a 25-percent increase in gas prices in a single month, which Donald Trump called a ``very small price to pay''--whoa, spoken like a billionaire.

We have not seen gas prices jump this much since Russia attacked Ukraine.

And now Donald Trump's war is choking off the Strait of Hormuz. That is where about one-fifth of the world's oil and natural gas supply comes through, and right now it is all bottled up.

So what does that mean? Trump's war with Iran means gas prices are skyrocketing for American families here at home. And Donald Trump's response?

If they rise, they rise.

In other words, he just doesn't care.

Here is another one: food prices. About a third of the world's fertilizer goes through that same Strait of Hormuz, and prices jumped up by 30 percent in the days after Trump started this war. One U.S. farmer even said his fertilizer suppliers are warning they just can't get the fertilizer. It is not only that the price has gone up; it just literally is not available.

So you have all this fertilizer that can't go through the Strait of Hormuz, that can't make it to our farmers here in America. And without that fertilizer, the farmers say they just can't plant as much food this year. And what is that going to mean? It means food prices will go up.

So that is gasoline; that is food. But the prices of clothes, of technology, of basically anything that is moved around by trucks that use gasoline or diesel--the prices for all of those goods will go up as well. Diesel prices are already up by more than 25 percent, raising the cost of shipping goods--including Amazon packages and food--nationwide. And jet fuel prices have shot up by 58 percent since Trump started the war. Airlines are passing these costs on to consumers by pushing ticket prices up even higher.

Donald Trump's war with Iran is gearing up to become another forever war that burns billions of taxpayer dollars and makes life even more expensive for Americans here at home. This is a war that the American people do not want and did not ask for, but they are the ones who are footing the bill.

And what does the Trump administration have to say about that? Well, listen to Trump's top economic adviser. He said:

If [the war] were to be extended, it wouldn't really disrupt the U.S. economy very much at all. It would hurt consumers, and we'd have to think about . . . what we would have to do about that. But that's really the last of our concerns right now.

Consumers, ``the last of our concerns''; higher prices for your family, ``the last of our concerns''--according to the Trump administration.

Look, you don't need to wonder why prices are going up. The Trump administration has said the quiet part out loud. The higher costs American families are paying are the last of the concerns for the Trump administration, and they can't even be bothered to worry about lowering costs for the American people.

Lie No. 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6: Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and other top Trump officials just can't keep their story straight. They have no clear plan and for weeks have failed to tell the American people what the goals are for this war and when this war will end.

First, Trump said the war would be over in 4 to 5 weeks. OK, that was 3 weeks ago. Since then, Trump has said all of these things: The war is ``won.'' The United States still needs to ``finish the job.'' The operations could end ``soon.'' The military may need to go ``further.''

Every hour, the Trump administration's justification for this war sounds completely different.

Why did the United States strike Iran? On March 2, Pete Hegseth said it was to end a 47-year war. The same day, Hegseth said it is because Iran refused to negotiate. And in another comment on the same day, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, said it was a response to Israel planning to strike. And then--yep, on the same day--Donald Trump said it had nothing to do with Israel planning to strike. Donald Trump said:

[I]f anything, I might have forced Israel's hand.

Rubio then said Iran would have ``so many short-range missiles'' in a year. That is the reason to initiate the war.

Two days later, Trump says the reason why the United States struck Iran is because he had a ``good feeling'' that Iran would strike U.S. assets and our personnel in the region.

Look, it is just one story after another, and none of them add up. How can the American people trust this government when this government can't even keep its own story straight?

And the Trump administration clearly has no plan for how this war will end. On the very first day of the war, Trump called the attacks ``major combat operations in Iran.'' A week later, Trump called it a ``short-term excursion'' that we are ``getting very close to finishing.''

And what is the goal? The administration has no clue. On day one of the war, Trump told the American people he had to attack Iran because Iran posed an imminent threat based on their nuclear capabilities. But remember, last June, Trump bombed Iran and claimed that Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities had been ``completely and totally obliterated.'' Both of those things cannot be true at the same time.

And understand this: If Trump believes that Iran's nuclear ambitions are a threat, then he had a chance to curb them. In fact, the United States had a deal that could have prevented Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. That was President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, and Trump ripped up that deal and--here is the best part--got nothing--nothing-- in return.

So instead of doing the hard work of diplomacy to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, Trump lies to the American people while dragging us into yet another reckless war that is costing American lives.

If you can believe it, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth have even given conflicting takes on whether or not this war is over. On March 8, Hegseth said:

[T]his is only just the beginning.

The next day, March 9, Trump said the war is ``complete, pretty much.'' But he also said: ``You could say both,'' very complete and just the beginning.

Trump also said that we ``haven't won enough'' and that we will ``go further.'' But just days later, he said:

We won. The first hour, it was over.

And then he said:

We don't want to leave early, do we? We've got to finish the job.

Then, last week, Trump said we are ramping up strikes.

How long will this war go on? Well, one day after the war, Trump said ``4 to 5 weeks.'' The same day, Hegseth said ``more or less than 2, 4, or 6 weeks.'' And then he added:

It could move up. It could move back.

Then Hegseth said:

We'll go as far as we need to go to advance American interest.

On March 10, Hegseth said it is up to Trump. He said:

Our will is endless. Ultimately, the President gets to determine the end state of those objectives.

On March 11, Trump said the war with Iran will end ``soon.''

Look, this is not a game. This administration is sending young Americans to die overseas, and that means our government leaders need to treat this conflict with life-and-death seriousness. Instead, they don't even have the decency to level with the American people.

Yet another lie from the Trump administration was about the horrific U.S. military strike on an elementary school in the early days of the war. Last week, a preliminary investigation by the Department of Defense confirmed that it is likely that it was our own military that bombed a girls school in Iran. This was one of the most devastating military mistakes in decades. Mr. President, 175 people were killed; most of them were children.

Now, before the investigation, Trump said over and over that the attack was done by Iran. But even after the investigation, Trump kept lying to the American people. He said he ``didn't know'' about the investigation--an investigation done by his own military on one of the most horrific military mistakes in recent history.

And, remember, Pete Hegseth gutted the office that was in charge of preventing civilian harm. How do I know? I led the charge to establish that office in the first place.

Hegseth is also purging the military's legal experts, the people who act as legal guardrails and ordered a ``ruthless'' overhaul to make sure that no one else who might question him is left standing.

It is a betrayal of our servicemembers and a betrayal of the American people that we still have no answers and no accountability.

So what would accountability look like here? Well, for starters, Pete Hegseth should be fired immediately. Hegseth's long pattern of chaos and incompetence has put our servicemembers and the American people at risk, and we haven't even scratched the surface of Signalgate or Hegseth's role in boat strikes that could be war crimes.

Pete Hegseth has got to go, and he needs to go now.

The basic story here is pretty straightforward. Working families are struggling to pay for basic needs like groceries, housing, healthcare, and electricity. And now, prices are shooting up even higher because of Donald Trump's new war in Iran.

Donald Trump's dangerous actions overseas are making everyday life both more expensive, and regular Americans are paying the price. That is Trump's America in a nutshell. And instead of changing their policies and actually trying to help the American people and not just themselves and their rich buddies, Trump and the Republicans are working to keep as many Americans from voting as humanly possible.

That is what this bill is really about, and every Senator who cares about our democracy should vote no.

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