Supporting Early-childhood Educators' Deductions ACT--Motion to Proceed

Text in the Record

SUPPORTING EARLY-CHILDHOOD EDUCATORS' DEDUCTIONS ACT--Motion to Proceed

Mr. THUNE. I move to proceed to Calendar No. 454, H.R. 5334. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion to proceed. The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 454, H.R. 5334, a bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow early childhood educators to take the educator expense deduction, and for other purposes.

Cloture Motion

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion. The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

Cloture Motion

We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the standing rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 454, H.R. 5334, an act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow early childhood educators to take the educator expense deduction, and for other purposes. John Thune, Darline Graham, John Barrasso, Tim Sheehy, John Cornyn, John Hoeven, Mike Crapo, James Lankford, Kevin Cramer, Steve Daines, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Tom Cotton, Roger Marshall, Thom Tillis, John R. Curtis, Jon Husted, Pete Ricketts The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.

Corruption

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, more than a year and a half ago, when Donald Trump placed his hand on a Bible and took the oath of office for the second time, he swore to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. In the time since, he has failed to live up to that basic promise. Instead, he has focused laser-like on a very different priority: to preserve, protect, and expand his family's wealth. The payments to the President and his family have been massive. The self-dealing and profiteering have been absolutely breathtaking in their scope. And you don't have to take my word for it. Two weeks ago, the President filed his annual financial disclosure, signed under penalty of law. It shows more than $2.3 billion in income last year alone--$2.3 billion made by the President in the last year alone. Wow. That is 3\1/2\ times what he reported the year before. So either he has just become a much better businessman since he became President, or he is corruptly using his office to enrich himself. The same can be said for much of the rest of his family. Exposing this corruption is the first necessary step to stopping it. This is important in its own right. Public servants should not be enriching themselves at public expense. But it is even more crucial to root out corruption for another reason, and that is because the cost of corruption is an economy that does not meet the basic needs of the American people--an economy that does not produce housing that average families can afford or a college education that young people can obtain without mortgaging their future or quality healthcare that is accessible or groceries that don't break the family budget. When the President is fixated only on his family's personal wealth, on money he can make by abusing the power of his position, on his own vanity projects--gilding the White House, gilding statues, and gilding a ballroom--he has very little time or inclination to address the problems facing ordinary Americans. They are mere afterthoughts, and the country suffers. That is the true cost of corruption. So, today, I am going to walk you through the top 10 ways this President has turned the Oval Office into a personal revenue stream, the settlements he has collected, the gifts he has pocketed, the money he and his family have extracted from anyone with the misfortune of needing something from this government, and the pet causes he has extorted money to fund.

[[Page S4254]]

Bear in mind that every number I am about to give you is either taken from his own financial filing or from public reporting. And because the President seems to enjoy ratings and rankings, we will count them down from No. 10 all the way to No. 1 of the top 10 most corrupt self- enrichment schemes of the President. By the time we reach No. 1, we will have tallied billions of dollars for him, for his family, for his personal whims, and nothing for you. That is the cost of corruption. No. 10, overseas licensing. Let's start small, and by ``small,'' I mean $23 million. Since his reelection, the Trump family has made at least $23 million licensing the Trump name overseas. A hotel in Oman, towers in India, golf courses on the outskirts of Riyadh and Doha--these are just a few of the more than 20 overseas projects the Trump administration is now pursuing, many of them requiring the cooperation of foreign governments. Here is the thing about needing help from foreign governments when you happen to be the President of the United States: Those governments are going to want something in return. They are going to want you to treat them very, very favorably in return. These countries all want something from the United States of America--U.S. military protection, U.S. nuclear powerplants, U.S. technologies, U.S. AI chips. You name it, they want something from this country. These countries are not investing in the Trump family projects out of the goodness of their hearts; they want payback. Much to the detriment of Americans' national security interests, they are getting it. Let's look at just one example, this one from Southeast Asia. The administration agreed to lower its threatened tariffs on Vietnam but not until after the Trump Organization broke ground on a $1.5 billion Trump golf course complex outside of Hanoi, a golf complex that Vietnamese officials fast-tracked by ignoring their own rules. This kind of overt pay-to-play is playing out in country after country after country. What is the cost of this corruption? Well, our national security suffers when the President sells advanced chips to a Gulf nation--not because it is in our interest to do so, not because our own AI companies don't need the chips to compete, but because the President or his family got a payoff. Our country suffers when the President makes national security decisions for financial reasons that benefit not the country but himself.

(Mr. BUDD assumed the Chair.) Did the President just approve nuclear powerplants in Saudi Arabia because it is a good idea or because the Saudis have been phenomenally generous to the Trump family business, to the President and his sons, and to his son-in-law Jared Kushner, in particular, in whom they invested a cool $2 billion. Will American troops, our sons and daughters, be more at risk of deployment to the Middle East with more endless wars or because of a nuclear arms race that we helped get started in the region, not because helping the Saudis go nuclear was good for us but because the Saudis wanted payback for their investment in Donald Trump's family? That is the cost of corruption. No. 9, the Paramount-CBS settlement worth $36 million. No. 9 brings us to perhaps one of the most frivolous media lawsuits to ever see the inside of a courtroom. Following a ``60 Minutes'' interview with Vice President Kamala Harris during that Presidential campaign, Trump sued CBS, alleging, believe it or not, election interference. His claim? That CBS edited the interview to make Harris sound better. Let me remind everyone: Most long-form television interviews are edited. That is how television works. But in Trump's reality, editing is election interference if he doesn't like the edits. CBS acknowledged the suit was frivolous. The President had no right to sue because he doesn't like how an interview with someone else is edited. It is absurd. The studio has a First Amendment right to make those decisions for itself. Nevertheless, CBS agreed to pay off the President $16 million. Why? Not because they thought they would lose the litigation. They knew Trump's claim would never be successful. So CBS agreed to pay off the President because its parent Paramount Studios wanted to merge with Skydance in a deal worth $8 billion. What was a $16 million payoff compared to an $8 billion deal? And it wasn't just the $16 million payoff. Skydance also committed to paying another $20 million in advertising and public service announcements favored by the President. Final tally: $36 million that the President was able to extort because he could leverage his power to kill the merger deal into a personal payout. So what is the cost of that corruption to you? Well, if you are a worker in the entertainment industry, it might just cost you your job because a merger that was approved on a corrupt basis and without considering job losses in the industry wasn't made to benefit you. If you are a consumer, you will be paying more for your streaming service and have fewer choices because this deal wasn't approved with consumers in mind. It was approved to make money for the President. This particular brand of corruption--suing media companies to extort them for payoffs--goes beyond anything the President did in his first term. This President doesn't just complain about the press, calling them fake news or enemies of the people. No, no. That was the stuff of Trump 1. In Trump 2, he sues them into submission, uses the leverage he has over their business deals and mergers, and pockets the proceeds--more money for him, fewer jobs for you, and more money out of your pocket when you want to stream your favorite shows. This is the cost of corruption. No. 8, Big Tech settlements: $60 million. No. 8 is a three-for-one: Twitter, YouTube, Meta--$60 million combined. Trump got suspended from these platforms for conduct related to the attack he incited on the Capitol. He sued, and one by one these companies paid out to him personally and to his pet projects like the golden ballroom. Twitter, now Elon Musk's X, settled for $10 million, a case a district judge had already thrown out and an appeals court was openly skeptical of. They paid anyway. And the President's response? He went on television to complain it was not enough, it was too low, that he was ``looking to get much more money than that.'' YouTube settled for $25 million. And in a flourish of creative accounting, $22 million of it was routed straight to the White House golden ballroom project. More on that ballroom in a minute. But Meta, the parent company to Facebook and Instagram, they also settled for $25 million. And just to sweeten the pot, they kicked in an additional million to Trump's inaugural fund. So let's recap just this item. The President sues these platforms over their refusal to amplify his false claims about the election and his incitement of insurrection. Using the leverage he now has over them as President to hurt their businesses, he extorts them to the tune of $60 million. It is a disinformation loyalty program--except the rewards go to the President, and the rest of us get more false claims, more false information, more social harms from an unregulated social media, and potentially more incitement of violence around our elections. This is the cost of that corruption. No. 7, Amazon and the ``Melania'' documentary: $40 million. For No. 7, we move back to the family business. You may have seen the trailers. Amazon struck a $40 million deal with First Lady Melania Trump for a documentary about her life before and during her time in the White House. Reports indicate that Melania's team shopped the project to several studios and executives, many of whom had attended Trump's inauguration before Amazon closed the deal. And Amazon separately contributed another million to Trump's inaugural fund. Of the $40 million, though, the First Lady personally received $28 million. The big-time theatrical run of this film brought in only $16 million at the box office, landing it at a sweet No. 68 on the 2026 releases behind ``Bunny!!,'' behind ``Guru,'' and behind ``Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe.''

Showing the first 12 paragraphs. The full remarks are in the Record.

Read the full remarks in the Record (opens in a new tab)