“Congress needs to act now on two big problems: artificial intelligence and natural disasters. First, the people making AI warn that it could cause serious harm, so we must pass laws to keep humans in control before it gets too powerful. Second, a warming planet is causing more terrible storms, floods, and fires across the country, including recent hurricanes in Hawaii. We must help communities prepare right now by fixing power lines, improving evacuation routes, and storing emergency supplies.”

“Mr. President, when the people building AI warn us about the potential for their models to cause serious harm, we must take them seriously. And this is not a question of whether you like progress or even how likely you think the worst-case scenario is. This is a question of who is in charge of this technology, whether we are going to ensure that people remain in control or if--for some inexplicable reason--we are going to allow machines to rapidly and continuously get more powerful than us, knowing full well the risks. The good news is that nothing is inevitable at this stage. What we do or don’t do right now will decide what happens next with this technology. And so Congress must not leave town without taking action to reduce catastrophic risk. We can argue about everything else later--what to do about AI’s energy use, what to do about the future of work, what to do about intellectual property, and all of that. But, first--first--we need to address the risk that is right in front of us. I know my colleagues have proposals in this space, and I am also working on legislation with Senator Warner. But the bottom line is this: We have to act now. And I want to be clear, if there is no movement in the coming days to seriously address this issue, Senator Warner and I will be back on here on the floor, attempting to pass bills to get this done. People are counting on us to protect them, and there is no excuse for inaction. Mr. President, in recent weeks, Hawaii experienced two separate hurricanes, which destroyed homes and roads, closed schools and offices, and left thousands of people in the dark. Ninety percent of the island of Kauai lost power during Hurricane Lala earlier this month--that is how extensive the damage was--and crews are still working to restore people. People on Hawaii Island, meanwhile, are still picking up the pieces from Hurricane Lala last month, which damaged 267 homes; washed out roads, bridges, and even a cemetery; and left people without power and water. And, now, the State is bracing for yet another storm. According to the National Hurricane Center, this one could bring life-threatening, catastrophic flooding and mudslides across parts of Hawaii Island and Maui. It has been one storm after another this year. We grieve those who died in the storms, and, as always, we are so grateful to the neighbors, the first responders, the linemen, the State and local officials who have been working together to help people in need. In the hours after the storm--in the hours after the storm--people brought over shovels to clear debris from streets and driveways and checked in on neighbors, while their own power was out. And in the days following, crews worked around the clock to restore power as quickly as possible. That is what we do in Hawaii. We take care of each other. That is the aloha spirit. And as response gives way to recovery, we will do everything we can to make sure Federal support is available for as long as it is needed. But, today, I want to talk about something that I have been reluctant to raise in my 14 years in the U.S. Senate, and that is that there is a reason these destructive disasters are piling up, one after another, leaving communities exhausted and governments depleted. It is the warming planet. Now, look, when someone is sitting in the dark without power for days or worse, and they have lost a loved one or their home, they don’t want to hear about how dryer fields and warmer oceans are the culprit of their pain. And they are right. In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, our collective obligation--but especially the government’s obligation--is to set politics aside and to help, not to make a point that you always wanted to make or to say, ``I told you so,’’ but to help. And so I have always hesitated to talk about disasters in this context. But the reason for the change, the reason I feel so strongly that it is time that we name the problem, as uncomfortable as it is, is that we can’t go on like this. Disasters used to be an unfortunate reality you had to deal with from time to time, and now we’re getting back-to-back hurricanes on top of historic floods that dumped more than 2 trillion gallons on the State earlier this year and catastrophic fires that leveled Lahaina 3 years ago. This is not normal. Now, it is true that we are in an El Nino year--and particularly a bad one at that--but this is not isolated to just this year nor is it limited to the great State of Hawaii. For 3 years in a row, now, we have had more than 20 disasters nationwide, each costing over a billion dollars in damages. And the world’s eight hottest months ever on record have all been in the last 3 years. You can chalk that all up to being a terrible coincidence or maybe it is the weather fairy acting up; or you can trust your own eyes because we all see it and feel it. You feel it when you go to the park and your kids can’t breathe because of the smoke from a wildfire that is burning hundreds of miles away. You feel it when you have to board up your windows and gather up supplies, as yet another storm approaches. You feel it when you move to a new State and find out that you can’t get home insurance anymore. You do not need a fancy science degree to understand what is happening nor do you even need to love the outdoors to want to do something about it, because we are all paying the price for our inaction. And so what do we do about it? The most obvious answer is to scale up clean energy and reduce pollution as aggressively as we possibly can. But let’s be clear: That will not happen overnight, and that will not stop the warming planet overnight. And so we need a plan to help communities to prepare for and respond to disasters in the here and now. We have to improve evacuation routes. We have to harden powerlines. We have to pre-position equipment and supplies. We have to make sure that people have access to air conditioning and heating. Clearing underbrush to slow or stop the fires, building infrastructure to reduce the risk of flooding--these are the kinds of steps that we need to be taking right now to protect people. Most of my colleagues here know that disasters are not a partisan issue. Hurricanes and floods and tornadoes and fires do not pick and choose their targets based on how the last election went. This week, it is Hawaii. It was Texas and Indiana earlier this summer. It will be somewhere else next. There, but for the grace of God, go I. And so we need to step up here. States and localities are lurching from one disaster to the next, and they need help. And every day Congress pretends like we don’t know what is happening, more and more people get hurt. I yield the floor.”

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“I want the Senate to vote this week to end the war in Iran. The war has cost over $43 billion, killed at least 19 American troops, and hurt hundreds more. It is draining our military supplies and driving up the cost of gas, food, and mortgages for everyday Americans. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, not the president. We need to vote to stop this war.”

“Mr. President, $43.6 billion and counting--that is the Pentagon’s estimate for how much it has spent on this illegal war in Iran. Now, that is a lot of money. In fact, it is so much money that if every American family gave $500, you still wouldn’t have enough to pay for this war--the missiles, the munitions, the warships. Over $43 billion of taxpayer money with no discernible benefit--wasted. But I don’t want to talk about what $43 billion includes. Today, I want to talk about what that number doesn’t include. Wars aren’t measured just in dollars and cents; they are measured in lives lost, whether Americans feel safer at home, better off. And by all these accounts, the costs are enormous. Take the 19 brave servicemembers whose deaths have been disclosed by the Pentagon. That is 19 families who have lost someone irreplaceable. In just a few weeks, children are going to trick-or-treat without their parent. A few weeks later, parents and families will gather for Thanksgiving with an empty seat at the table. ``I will never recover from this,’’ one widow wrote on social media. What is even more heartbreaking is that we don’t know exactly how many servicemembers have died in the Middle East amid this war. Reports say that the Pentagon is not being transparent with Congress or the American people. What we know is that every one of those lives lost deserves our gratitude, and every one of those families deserves an accurate accounting of this war’s human cost. Since February, more than 800 servicemembers have been wounded in the Middle East. Some went days without receiving adequate hospital care. Many face life-altering injuries. Tens of thousands of their fellow servicemembers are still deployed, fighting a war that this administration still refuses to call a war. Back at home, their loved ones are left worrying and wondering whether their loved ones will get home for the holidays. You are not going to find any of those costs in the $43 billion pricetag. There has also been a staggering cost in America’s loss to national security. Since June, the war has consumed between one-half and two- thirds of our key missile defense interceptors. Even with increased production rates, it will take at least 5 years to rebuild those stockpiles. Every interceptor we fire in Iran is one that we don’t have protecting this country in the future. Iranian strikes have damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings and structures on U.S. bases, along with our relationships with the allies and partners who agreed to host them as a bulwark against the aggressions of Iran. That premise has been turned on its head. At the same time, we have shown Iran that it can seize control of one of the world’s most critical waterways and literally bring global trade to a stop, bring it to its knees. A quarter of the world’s oil and a third of the world’s fertilizer trade used to flow through the Strait of Hormuz. No longer. We have given our adversaries a roadmap and even a test drive for holding the global economy hostage, which the Houthis have already exploited in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. America’s adversaries are celebrating our distraction, this futility, and the mounting costs. Every dollar we spend on Iran is a dollar we are not spending modernizing our military to protect against the threat of an ascendant China. Every warship that is deployed to the Arabian Sea is one fewer warship that is available to protect the South China Sea. But you are not going to find those costs in the $43 billion pricetag either. And then there is the cost, well, to you, the American people. You are paying for this war every day when you fill up your tank, when you buy groceries, when you pay your rent. Before the war, the national average for diesel was $3.72 per gallon. This week, it is over $6.50 per gallon for diesel. That is nearly a 75-percent increase. That means that a small farmer using 1,000 gallons of diesel during a harvest is paying roughly $2,800 more just to do the same work as before the war. Even Republicans have said it: This is ``killing farmers’ income’’-- that that is what this war is doing: ``killing farmers’ income.’’ The war is also impacting Americans’ grocery bills. Between July of 2025 and July of 2026, fresh vegetable prices increased over 6 percent, beef rose over 9 percent, and tomatoes are up over 13 percent. You shouldn’t have to be a millionaire to drive to the grocery store and feed your family. Few have felt the financial cost of this war more than prospective home buyers. Before the Iran war, the average 30-year mortgage rate was hovering right around 6 percent--still too high for many families. Today, it is above 7 percent. For the average Colorado home buyer, that difference adds up fast. That is a mortgage that is $280 more every month, almost $4,000 a year, and over $100,000 over the course of a 30- year mortgage. That is real money that could go to childcare, to a child’s college savings, or just their lifetime savings. For many, it means buying a home just doesn’t make financial sense right now, even if you have been saving up for years. You won’t see those tradeoffs reflected in the Pentagon’s $43 billion pricetag for this war. Let me ask, finally, what is the cost of this war on our democracy? James Madison once wrote to his friend Thomas Jefferson that ``the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it.’’ That is why the Founders gave Congress the power to declare war--not the President, not the Supreme Court; Congress. Yet, so far, not a single Senator has introduced a legislative measure to formally declare war on Iran. The Presiding Officer may have noticed that up until now, I haven’t mentioned President Trump. That is not because the President bears no responsibility for this war. He certainly does. President Trump unilaterally made the decision to enter this costly--for most people, unwarranted--war. But the decision about whether it continues does rest with Congress. To my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, who are wrestling with this issue, just ask yourself, is this war making the lives of your constituents any better? That isn’t a partisan question; it is a question every Senator has an obligation to ask and a responsibility to get the response for. Because whether the President is a Republican or a Democrat, Congress cannot surrender its constitutional power simply because the President belongs to our party. We all, each and every Senator--we all took an oath to defend the Constitution, not a President. We all took an oath to serve the American people, not a party. President Trump made the decision to enter this war, but whether this war continues is now a decision for all of us. What is the true cost of this war and the cost of allowing it to continue? Well, this week, the Senate is going to get another chance to decide. I urge, as I have been--I urge all of my colleagues to join me in voting to end this war now and for good. I yield the floor.”

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“I want the Senate to pass this bill right now. The House already passed it. It protects federal workers' union rights and contracts. President Trump took those rights away so he could fire experienced workers and replace them with political loyalists.”

“Mr. President, in a moment, I am going to ask this body on a unanimous consent basis to pass an important piece of legislation that has already passed in an overwhelming fashion out of the Republican-controlled House. And this legislation is to make sure that we protect our Federal workers and realize that our Federal workers do remarkable things. They inspect our food, support our troops, respond to national disasters, frankly, protect our safety. They deserve basic workforce protections that prevents retaliation, discrimination, and wrongful termination. Unfortunately, this current Trump administration has taken to heart the notion that OMB Director Vought said he wanted to traumatize the Federal workforce. Well, he has, and I cut this back because I have got a couple of my colleagues joining me. President Trump signed two Executive orders, one that ripped away collective bargaining rights from more than a million public servants and the other that unilaterally canceled hundreds of thousands of existing union contracts under, frankly, what I think are false national security pretense, to make it easier, frankly, to fire experienced nonpartisan civil servants and, candidly, to replace them with political loyalists. That is why we started the civil service back many, many years ago. I am joined by three of the four of us from the greater Capital area, so with that, I would like to yield my time to the Senator from Maryland Senator Alsobrooks.”

“I want Congress to pass this bill to protect federal workers. The president took away their union and bargaining rights, and that harms hundreds of thousands of workers in Maryland. This bill gives them those rights back.”

“Mr. President, I would like to thank my colleague from Virginia for his leadership on this critical bill. Both Maryland and Virginia have uniquely felt the pain from this administration’s effort to attack Federal workers. They are our constituents, patriots who serve this country no matter the party; people who have been disrespected over and over again by efforts to weaken their collective power. This administration has spent all of this time driving up the cost of everything from gas to groceries, starting wars that we are paying for at home, making healthcare unaffordable and making our lives worse. But what is the real threat in their eyes? Our patriot civil servants, patriotic civil servants. It is a cruel lie meant to cause division and distract the American people from the awful things the Republicans are doing. The fact is, President Trump and Russell Vought are afraid of the collective power of these workers. They are afraid that Federal workers’ ability to fight back through collective bargaining will keep them from bending the government to their will. President Trump stripped Federal workers of their hard-won collective bargaining rights, one of the most significant acts of union busting in our Nation’s history, all in the name of national security. Since then, he started a war in Iran with no exit strategy, bombed eight countries, and awarded billions of dollars in defense contracts to his sons and cronies. The real threat to our national security is not our dedicated civil servants; it is this corrupt President and his reckless administration. Together my colleagues and I are instead laser-focused on protecting these patriotic Federal workers on fighting back against efforts to erode their rights in the workplace. And this is personal for me and for the 460,000 Marylanders who serve the Federal Government. We will not stop fighting until the Protect America’s Workforce Act is passed and our rights are restored.”

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“I want the Senate to pass this bill. The President took away union bargaining rights for federal workers. His administration has also fired many workers, including military veterans, and paid thousands to stay home instead of doing their jobs. This bill stops the order that took away their union rights.”

“Mr. President, it is good to be together with my colleagues, and I needn’t repeat, but what I will say is I view this effort by President Trump and the administration to go after collective bargaining rights as a larger attack on the idea of public service because we have seen Federal employees laid off in record numbers through the DOGE actions at the beginning of the administration, through buyouts that were somewhat involuntary. One of the things the administration did early was they sort of indiscriminately laid off probationary employees because those employees don’t have the ability to easily challenge their layoffs. Those probationary employees included massive numbers of veterans who because they had left Active Duty service and then joined the Federal civil service were probationary for the first 2 years, even though they were midcareer professionals who had patriotically served their country for decades. So you have stripping away collective bargaining rights. You have laying off probationary employees. You have other DOGE cuts. You have forced purchases trying to buy people out, trading civil servant for political so that they can be more easily fired. Announcing that you are going to move Agencies out of the DC area with the hopes that when you do, a lot of Federal employees may not move with it. This is all an effort to just dramatically shrink those who were serving the American public. And so what do you see? My colleagues and I know, tax season is a season where a lot of people are calling Agencies to try to get help. We had done a good job in reducing waiting times on the phone so that people could actually get their questions answered. They ballooned again this year because of all these layoffs. Of all the things that demonstrate the attack on public service that this stripping of collective bargaining is a piece of, the one that I think that just speaks most obviously was the one that came out about a week ago, that the administration put on administrative leave thousands of Federal employees and paid them anyway, but locked them out of their jobs so that they could not serve their fellow Americans. How is this effective to pay billions of dollars--billions of dollars to people--but force them to stay home and not let them serve their fellow Americans answering their tax questions, inspecting for food safety, being part of the national security apparatus? It is just an overall effort to attack Federal employees, even if you are going to waste money to do it. Our Federal employees want to serve their fellow Americans. We should allow them to do it free of intimidation or reprisal, and that is why I am so strong to stand with my colleague from Virginia to support the Protect America’s Workforce Act.”

“I want the Senate to pass this bill right now. The president used executive orders to label two-thirds of all federal workers as national security staff without explaining why. This wrongly stripped union rights from entire agencies, including the Treasury, the FDA, and the FCC. The House already passed this bill with support from both parties.”

“Mr. President, the way the President has formed these Executive orders under national security reasons--and I understand narrowly tailored national security exemptions might make sense, but the Trump administration is not doing this in good faith. Matter of fact, the President has inappropriately classified literally two-thirds of the Federal workforce as having national security missions without any explanation whatsoever. So the Executive orders reclassify the entire Departments and Agencies, for example, the whole Department of Treasury, the whole Food and Drug Administration, the FCC, stripping these employees of their rights. So I urge my colleagues to join us in passing the Protect America’s Workforce Act. As I mentioned to my colleague, this has already passed by a large margin bipartisan in the Republican-controlled House. So let’s stand up for these vital, dedicated workers, protect longstanding labor protections and the integrity of the civil service. Mr. President, notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 2550, which is at the desk; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.”

“I want the Senate to pass a resolution stating that climate change makes wildfires happen more often, burn hotter, and cause more damage. The science shows this clearly, but Republicans keep refusing to admit it.”

“Mr. President, I am here with another unanimous consent request, and I appreciate the Senator from Florida, Senator Scott, for being here to participate in this exchange. I keep coming here to try to reinforce the obvious, scientifically clear point that climate change is real, that that is a simple scientific fact. The way this has gone is that I came to the floor earlier this year and asked my colleagues to agree on that simple scientific fact: Climate change is real and, frankly, our fossil fuel emissions are causing it. Well, I guess it is no surprise, but my Republican colleagues would not agree to that fact. So I have returned to the floor, time and again, in hopes that my Republican colleagues could agree to some of the simpler truths contained within that truth. Each time faced with well-documented truths about sea level rise or wide-ranging climate economic fallout, Republicans have objected. Well, climate change isn’t stopping or slowing down, and I won’t either. So today’s simple truth is that climate change is making wildfires more frequent, more intense, and more destructive. My question is, can we not all agree on that? Here is some background. This chart from the National Interagency Fire Center shows that average U.S. acreage burned annually by wildfires has almost tripled in the last three decades, and the upward drift of the chart is pretty obvious. The science proving that climate change makes wildfires worse is both clear and straightforward, and it has been well-known for decades. It is not new. In fact, wildfires are part of a climate upheaval that Big Oil itself predicted. Shell, for instance, in a 1989 confidential planning document, warned that if fossil fuels were not brought under control, ``there would be more violent weather--more storms, more droughts, more deluges. Mean sea level would rise at least 30 cm. Agricultural patterns would be most dramatically changed. . . . Boundaries would count for little--overwhelmed by the numbers. Conflicts would abound. Civilization could prove a fragile thing.’’ That is what Big Oil said about climate change effects from their product back in 1989: ``Civilization could prove a fragile thing.’’ This is the underlying temperature increase that is driving the droughts that Shell predicted nearly 40 years ago. So, first, we know that fossil fuel emissions--climate change--is increasing global temperatures. You can’t read it. This goes back to 1860. This is a pretty longtime chart in this instance. This is now. So how does it work? What does that heat do to drive wildfires? Well, warmer air draws more moisture out of the soil, out of plants, out of bodies of water. There is a scientific name for this. NOAA calls the phenomenon evaporative demand or sometimes atmospheric thirst. But you don’t have to use scientific language to understand it. You just watch a puddle dry up on a hot day. That is what you are seeing. NASA, NOAA, and the Forest Service call drought conditions like these fire weather--fire weather. According to NASA’s website on wildfires and climate change, ``human- caused climate change [is] the main cause for increasing fire weather in the American West.’’ Now, it is about a quarter of 6 this evening when I read that quote from NASA’s website. You might want to start the shot clock on how long it takes for the fossil fuel goons to get in there and change the website. Climate change makes droughts last longer. The Forest Service reports that what was once a 4-month fire season now lasts 6 to 8 months. So there are more opportunities for any spark to start a dangerous blaze. And climate changes make drought conditions worse; that is, drier; that is, with more flammable material. So those fires that do start in that longer season are more likely to become severe. In January of 2025, a collection of wildfires in the Los Angeles metro area burned through over 15,000 homes and businesses, killed more than two dozen people, and poisoned the air with toxic pollution. Mr. President, 2026 is already on track for one of the worst wildfire seasons on record. August wildfires in Spokane, WA, caused over $1 billion in damage and destroyed over 800 people’s homes. In July, wildfire smoke blanketed much of the country and degraded air quality for tens of millions of people. Researchers have found that the number of people in the United States who experience at least one extreme smoke day per year is up 27 times in the last decade. So if you used to have one extreme smoke day in your life, now you have 27 in the same period of time. Every county in the continental United States experiences degraded air quality from wildfire smoke at least 16 times every year, and the cost of that is real. Air pollution from wildfire smoke makes people sicker and causes deaths. Scientists have known for decades--decades--that climate change is making wildfires worse. More recently, the data has gotten more precise. We can now connect climate change to specific individual events. In the case of the L.A. fires, scientists from the World Weather Attribution and Imperial College London found that climate change made the weather conditions that drove these fires 35 percent more likely. This kind of analysis is called climate attribution. The National Academies recently released a comprehensive report on the current capabilities of climate attribution, including on wildfires. To no one’s surprise, the fossil fuel industry and its allies are already out to discredit this work. In the face of tens of thousands of Americans losing their homes to wildfires, millions more facing skyrocketing insurance premiums as wildfire risk becomes either unavailable or unaffordable, and the risk of crashing home values--because when you can’t insure your home, guess what. You can’t get a mortgage on your home. And if you are the kind of person who bought your home with a mortgage and needs somebody with a mortgage to buy it from you when it is time to sell, that crashes the value of your home. It destroys its worth. Well, in the face of those facts, the traditional response of the fossil fuel industry is to try and hide the truth, but there is truth, and the truth is climate change is making wildfires more frequent, more intense, and more destructive. And I really hope that we are able to agree on that. Mr. President, so notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 559; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.”

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“I want the senator from Florida to work with me to address climate change. Climate change is hurting Florida the most. Rising seas and floods are causing insurance costs to soar, insurance companies to drop homeowners, and property values to fall. We need to act before Florida's housing and insurance markets collapse.”

“Mr. President, I am looking forward to the day when the Senator from Florida and I can be working together on these issues. As he knows very well, the University of Florida teaches the science of climate change. They have courses like Managing for a Changing Climate, Climate Change and Health, Climate Change Science and Solutions, Oceans and Global Climate Change, and many, many others. And it would be great if the science that the University of Florida teaches were also respected and reflected here on the Senate floor. It is more than just the University of Florida getting it right. This also lands in Florida in big ways because while wildfire may not be an issue in the good Senator’s State, flooding sure is. And that same cascade of risk that I talked about--starting with climate risk, hitting insurance security, moving into mortgage availability, clobbering property values, and then leading to recession--is well underway in Florida. Some have called it the great climate insurance collapse, and in that very difficult situation, Florida is first and worst into that danger. Climate risk first; insurance collapse, second; mortgage market suffering, third--all of those things are happening. Indeed, the chief economist from Freddie Mac, who is not a green guy--he is a finance and mortgage guy--warned there was a coastal property values crash coming. And as we go through those different stages from climate risk to insurance to mortgages to property values, unfortunately, Florida led the country last year in lost property values, which is at least, in part, I think a function of this risk and how it is hammering Florida homeowners. So you don’t really get away from this kind of a general risk. The insurance industry is not lying to everybody. They are not leaving customers who pay their premiums because they don’t like the customer. They are leaving customers who pay their premiums because the property is no longer insurable. And what we are seeing here across the United States is massive predictions in insurance rate increase, and Florida is really at the epicenter of that. This dark band is a 200-percent to 300-percent increase, and you see it all along the Florida coast. They are running at about $14,000 already in insurance costs for homes in Florida. Double that--not double it, add 200 percent and add 300 percent. That is actually tripling and quadrupling. You can see how that begins to hammer the home’s value. And here, you see a similar problem. This isn’t just a cost problem; this is a nonrenewal problem. It is going to end up costing you more money once you are nonrenewed--absolutely. But you also have to go through the immediate hassle and worry and anxiety of finding out how the heck you are going to insure your home once your insurance company has nonrenewed you. And you can see the focus of nonrenewal is along these coastal areas, very heavily in Florida, and then in some of these wildfire areas that we talked about out in California. So this continues to come at us. It is focused on certain geographic areas more than others, but no place more than Florida. So I look forward to working with the good Senator from Florida on finding solutions before the bottom falls out of his insurance, mortgage, and real estate markets. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.”

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“The President and Health Secretary Kennedy are spreading false information about vaccines. This is causing measles outbreaks in Colorado and across the country. I want the President to cancel his order against childhood vaccine rules and fire Secretary Kennedy.”

“Madam President, over the past few weeks, familiar scenes have been playing out in Colorado and all across the country. Families are buying new books and backpacks, picking up school supplies, and taking their children to the pediatrician for their annual checkup. For decades, back-to-school season did not prompt anxiety or confusion--except for maybe the kids like me that didn’t do their summer reading. Parents could rely on the recommendations from their pediatricians, and the questions they did have were answered by professionals. But that peace of mind is being undermined by the current administration--including by the President of the United States and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who have worked tirelessly to undermine decades of settled science around routine vaccinations that have kept kids safe in this country and around the world for years. The consequences of that broken trust are showing up in our emergency rooms and in our classrooms. Parents are increasingly concerned that their kids will go to school and come back with a serious disease. Right now, our Nation is living through the most severe measles outbreak in over 35 years. Measles is not a mild childhood inconvenience; it is one of the most contagious viruses on Earth, capable of causing high fevers, brain swelling, long-term disability, and death. In Colorado, we have already confirmed 25 cases this year, including 7 hospitalizations. Of these cases, 22 people were unvaccinated. Of the 25 who have measles in Colorado today, 22 were unvaccinated. That is the most we have had in over 30 years. You have to go back to 1995 to find an outbreak in my State that is even close to what we are seeing today. We are going backward when it comes to public health in the richest country in the world, and families in Colorado and all across this country are suffering the consequences. But what is taking place in Colorado is especially tragic because Colorado’s experience is one of the reasons that the United States has a two-dose vaccine recommendation today. Back in 1988, an outbreak of 84 measles cases swept through Fort Lewis College in Durango. It caught public health officials completely by surprise because nearly every student on that campus had already received a measles shot. Under the guidance at that time, one dose was supposed to be enough, so CDC researchers--not people playing politics--CDC researchers went to Durango to figure out what exactly had gone wrong, to learn from this surprising outcome. There, they discovered something that continues to inform our vaccine policy even today: While the virus infected students who had only received a single shot, not a single student who had had two doses got sick. That campus in Durango became the proving ground for today’s recommendation on measles. Based directly on what they saw at Fort Lewis and similar outbreaks at that time, the CDC updated its guidelines in 1989 to establish the two-dose MMR schedule recommended for every schoolchild in America today. This updated recommendation paved the way for measles to be officially eliminated across the United States in the year 2000. That was a quarter of a century ago, when, following the science, this country eliminated measles; and for 30 years after that, routine vaccine recommendations have kept children safe and in the classroom. Back then, faced with a public health emergency, we did what you would expect: We followed the evidence, updated our practices, and successfully prevented another outbreak of that scale or severity going forward. We learned from each other. Today, we are taking the opposite approach. Instead of defending the settled science that saved millions of lives, President Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have spent months waging a campaign to promote skepticism, stoke fear, and amplify outright lies. Look at what has happened in just the last few weeks. In August, President Trump signed an Executive order on childhood vaccines that overrides decades of settled scientific consensus. It encourages States to abandon school entry requirements. It recommends reducing the number of routine vaccines protecting our kids. And it calls for breaking up longstanding combination shots like the measles, mumps, and rubella-- MMR--vaccine into separate single-disease doses spread over multiple doctor visits. That recommendation ignores the basic, undeniable fact, which is that separate single-disease shots for measles, mumps, and rubella do not even exist in the U.S. market today. They are so obsolete, and we were following the science, such that those single shots that the President and the HHS Secretary are calling for don’t even exist today. And it ignores the evidence that we have from countries that have already tried to separate the dose and then reverted back because it didn’t work. In the 1990s, Japan moved away from the combination MMR shot and attempted to separate the vaccines. The result was predictable. It was immediate and disastrous. They saw vaccination rates plummet and measles outbreaks surged. And, earlier this year, Japan officially abandoned the experiment--as we will, undoubtedly--and returned to the combined MMR vaccine. We don’t need to repeat another nation’s mistake when the safety and lives of American children are on the line. And telling parents to ask for shots that don’t exist today only plunges families into further chaos. It forces parents to schedule endless appointments, take time off work, and pay multiple copays for vaccines that used to be delivered safely in a single visit. As everybody in this place knows, before I came to the Senate, I was the superintendent of schools in Denver. This was such a happy time every year, when people were coming back, bringing their kids back to school. And the last thing that they wanted to worry about was getting a free vaccine for their children or whether they should have that vaccine at all. In those days, not that long ago, there was nobody worrying about a President or an HHS Secretary peddling misinformation that would lead to the biggest outbreak in measles that we have had in 30 years. Things are hard enough as it is for families in Colorado and all across this country right now. We don’t need to make matters worse by intentionally misleading them about what is safe and making it harder for them to get a free vaccine at the pharmacy down the street. And, by the way, I know my colleagues here well enough to understand something that I don’t think the administration understands. It is not good enough just to get your kid vaccinated. The other kids in the school need to be vaccinated. The other kids in the classroom need to be vaccinated for vaccines to work. And, until this administration, that wasn’t controversial because we could see what the science told us. And for families in rural Colorado, where healthcare access is already stretched thin and local hospitals are already in danger of going bankrupt because of the razor-thin margins, this burden that they are creating is almost unbearable. And to make matters worse, the other week, the President told the American people that the MMR vaccine--a safe, lifesaving shot given to hundreds of millions of children over four decades--the President called it ``quite lethal’’--``quite lethal.’’ They had to send out Dr. Oz to clean up the record after that--the Director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. They had to send him out on live television to contradict the President of the United States, who said that this routine vaccine that we have relied upon to save millions of lives was ``quite lethal.’’ Meanwhile, Secretary Kennedy spent last week serving as the keynote speaker for an anti-vax convention. In the middle of the worst measles surge our country has seen in 35 years, the Nation’s top health official stood in front of a crowd of anti-science activists and reassured them that they have ``a strong and steadfast friend in the White House.’’ I wish I could tell families trying to get their kids back to school that they have a steadfast friend in the White House, that they have somebody who is trying to make their life easier, not harder; to make it easier to bring up a kid, not harder. When the leadership of HHS spends its time amplifying conspiracy theories, they are not making communities safer; they are driving down immunization rates, leaving our schools vulnerable, and putting the lives of Colorado’s children directly in harm’s way. Today, Colorado has the sixth lowest measles vaccination rate in the nation for kindergartners. Only 87.7 percent of Colorado kindergartners have received both doses of their MMR vaccine, and that is well below the 95 percent threshold for herd immunity. In fact, 57 out of Colorado’s 64 counties now fail to meet that basic safety line. My message to Colorado parents from this floor tonight is simple: Vaccines are safe, they are effective, and they remain our strongest defense against diseases like measles. And when we allow misinformation to drive down vaccination rates, we aren’t just failing to meet an important public health indicator; we are failing moms in Aurora and in Pueblo and in Durango. We are failing pediatricians like Dr. Stinar in Grand Junction, who are fighting on the frontlines of this disease; and we are failing vulnerable children across Colorado who have no choice in the matter. Parents, pediatricians, and families across Colorado should be able to expect more from their government. They deserve certainty. They deserve clear communication. They deserve to know that their public health system is designed to keep them safe, rather than to pursue another political agenda that has nothing to do with their education or their health. I think we should be having a debate in this country about the state of healthcare in the United States of America and about the ways in which we failed this generation and the next generation in providing a system that actually delivers better healthcare at a reasonable price and mental health care at a reasonable price, instead of plunging people into further misery or into bankruptcy. I wish we were having that debate on the Senate floor, but we can’t begin to have that until the basic facts about science and medicine are taken seriously by this administration. The President should start by rescinding his Executive order today on childhood vaccines. He should fire Secretary Kennedy, as I have long called for. But until that happens--and I don’t think it is going to happen in the foreseeable future. Until that happens, we are going to be stuck fighting battles against a disease that we functionally eliminated 30 years ago. Kids and families in Colorado and all across this country deserve so much better than that. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.”

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