In remarks on the Senate floor Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) spoke about the Republican budget resolution and President Trump's tariffs.
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NewsTranscript
00:00The senator from Minnesota. Mr. President, I appreciated the words of my
00:06colleague from Maryland because I was standing there thinking that a budget is
00:10actually a choice. It's a value choice. It is an economic choice of where you
00:18want to spend the taxpayers' hard-earned money. And what this budget does, as he
00:24points out, six trillion dollars in the next 10 years that would add to the debt
00:30because of tax cuts for the wealthiest people. I have no problem making sure we
00:38don't increase taxes for people making under a hundred four hundred thousand a
00:43year. That's a good idea. But this is a way different animal than that. It
00:50actually takes the parts of the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy, makes sure
00:55they stay in place, and then adds even more so that two-thirds of the benefits
01:00from this are going to the wealthiest and the big corporations. And the thing
01:07he raised that I loved was, what could you do with that money? Well, you could
01:12reduce the debt. That'd be a good thing. You could put part of it so that we make
01:16sure we do that. You could put the funding into actually taking on some, say,
01:23tax incentives for housing, which we so dearly need to work with the private
01:27sector to build more housing. You could put it into incentives for childcare. You
01:33could shore up Social Security. You could do all kinds of great things that the
01:38people actually thought they were voting for, even a large number of them that
01:43voted for Donald Trump. But that's not what this budget is. So I appreciate
01:48Senator Van Hollen pointing out that in the end, these budgets are a choice. Who
01:53do you want to spend the money on? What do you think is going to work for this
01:57economy? We already know that Donald Trump has sent this economy into a
02:01tailspin as the market continues to go down. And this isn't just a market. As
02:07horrified as traders are and experts on Wall Street, you got to take it to Main
02:13Street. When you take it to Main Street, you've got people who have been
02:17depending on their retirement, whether it's a 401k or some other kind of
02:22retirement for the rest of their lives. Or you have people who've saved
02:27money for their kids to go to school. Or you have young people just starting out
02:32who maybe have, you know, five years into savings, don't know if their job's still
02:37going to be there because the economy's going into a tailspin. That's a choice.
02:41That's a totally self-inflicted wound yesterday. That was a choice. The economy,
02:48coming out of the pandemic, struggling through all of that, inflation and the
02:53like, was actually when Donald Trump took over in a pretty good place. And look
02:58what he's done. Completely unnecessary, self-inflicted wound. But the problem is
03:06who it wounds. Thousands of dollars in taxes on the average family. Twenty
03:12thousand dollars more for a home for young people that might want to buy
03:15their first home. More money to buy a car. It goes on and on and on. So when I look
03:21at that budget, I can't just see it in a vacuum. I see it in this totality of
03:26what's going on right now. Because with these tariffs, the wealthiest people,
03:30they're gonna lose billions of dollars or millions of dollars. They're gonna be
03:34fine though because they got everything else. But it's the people who are living
03:38paycheck to paycheck or depending on the Social Security. They're the ones that's
03:43going to suffer from this. And then you add this budget to the mix. This budget
03:48would give massive tax cuts to the ultra wealthy and pay for it by raising costs,
03:53taking away health care, threatening the economic security of tens of millions of
03:58Americans. It is a major handout to the wealthy. If you don't know what the
04:05numbers are, here's a great one to remember. It would give Elon Musk a
04:09fifty million dollar tax break over the next ten years. Do we really think he
04:14needs that? Does he need ten million dollars more? He does not. You could
04:18literally structure this budget so that you are not reducing taxes or giving
04:24special deals to people making over four hundred thousand dollars a year. You
04:28could do that. But that's not what this is. It went the opposite. It gives the
04:33wealthiest 0.1% an average tax cut of a hundred eighty thousand a year. In total,
04:40over the next thirty years, it would spend twenty five trillion on tax cuts
04:46for the wealthy and the big corporations. Meanwhile, what's happening to people's
04:50grocery prices? What's happening to their health care prices? What's
04:54happening to their housing prices? This isn't speculation. Look at what happened
04:59the last time the Republicans ran this playbook in 2017. They told us back then
05:04those tax cuts would trickle down, that wages would go up, that jobs would come
05:09back. What actually happened? Big companies spent nearly a trillion dollars
05:14on stock buybacks to enrich their executives and their wealthy
05:19shareholders. Wages for working people barely moved. Manufacturing jobs didn't
05:24boom. But the first year after that passed, corporate America spent over 800
05:30billion buying back its own stock, more than 50% higher than the year
05:35before. And this year, those buybacks are projected to top one trillion for the
05:41first time ever. That helps Wall Street, not Main Street. So here we are again.
05:47Same trickle-down theory, just repackaged with even more debt and even
05:53fewer benefits for the middle class. As noted, the debt, this budget, the
05:59Congressional Budget Office estimates it would add 37 trillion to the debt over
06:05the next 30 years. 37 trillion on the backs of our kids, grandkids. That's right.
06:11We're leaving the next generation to foot a 37 trillion dollar bill so we can
06:16give billionaires a tax cut today. That is the choice. And it's all wrapped up in
06:22in very complex language so it doesn't sound like they're doing it, but check
06:28actual news sources. Look at this to verify what the actual numbers
06:33are. 25 trillion of it is tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations over
06:40the next 30 years. The kicker, they're trying to hide that massive debt with
06:45even their own members. These are Republican elected members of Congress
06:49have called a budget gimmick, intellectual fraud, and my favorite one,
06:55fairy dust. Instead of leveling with the American people, they're using an
06:59accounting trick to pretend that these new tax cuts cost nothing. I believe that
07:05the American people know better. I believe they know better when they woke
07:09up this morning to see where the stock market was and thought about all their
07:13hard-earned money and what they were doing with it. I believe they know better
07:17when they look at any kind of simple description of what this budget is.
07:22They promised to lower the deficit, but this budget adds trillions to the debt.
07:27They promised to bring down costs, but you don't even need to check the news, just go
07:31down the grocery aisle and see if that has really happened. And they promised to
07:36put everyday Americans first, but this budget, it puts the wealthiest first or
07:42they wouldn't be getting the lion's share of the benefit. Under this plan,
07:46health care for nearly 80 million dollars of Americans is at risk,
07:50including two-thirds of nursing home residents, two and five kids, and one in
07:55three Americans living in rural areas. That's because, why do I say that? I'm
07:59just making that up. No, that's because the budget plan includes instructions to
08:05cut 880 billion from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. That's the one
08:10the House sent over, which oversees Medicaid. The Congressional Budget
08:14Office, non-partisan, said it plainly, it is mathematically impossible to meet that
08:19target without cutting Medicaid. This is a plan to cut Medicaid. That's why we have
08:26a different vision. You could do a budget, and I see Ron Wyden is here, the highest
08:32ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee. He knows what we could do if
08:36they would work with us. We could do a budget that would lower costs, not raise
08:40them. And how does this raise costs for people? You already see it right now,
08:46and they're not doing anything about it. You see the tariffs are going to make it
08:49worse, and then you also see what's going on with this budget with Social Security,
08:53Medicaid, and the like. We could strengthen Medicare, Medicaid, and Social
08:59Security. Instead of giving a $300,000 tax cut to someone in the top 0.1%,
09:05we could invest in child care, affordable housing, education, and yeah,
09:09affordable energy. And at the same time, we could put some aside to bring down
09:14the debt. That's how we support working families. That's how we make sure our
09:19seniors retire with dignity. So we are standing up all day today to expose this
09:26budget for what it really is. It is benefits for the wealthy and the big
09:33guys at the expense of everyone else, and that means you. Thank you, Mr.
09:39President. I yield the floor.