Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Chaos, Corruption, And Costs Of Trump’s First 100 Days
Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor to condemn the actions of Donald Trump and his administration in the first 100 days of his second term, wreaking havoc on average Americans by invoking policies that hurt families in order to prioritize the personal interests of him and his billionaire buddies. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
Democrats are holding the floor late tonight, to expose the disaster of Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. We will be speaking for several more hours.
This week marks the 100th day of Donald Trump’s second term as President of the United States. It’s been 100 days from hell, and people are fed up.
One hundred days in, the legacy of Trump’s second term is already set: chaos, corruption, and cost.
It’s chaos—one fiasco after another after another. One minute Donald Trump and his people say one thing, then the opposite, then they say something else entirely. Nobody ever seems to know which way is up, and many of them just lie outright to the American people.
It’s corruption—Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Republicans are hijacking the government, raiding through the public’s piggy bank, and picking the pockets of the American people. These billionaires are using the government to even make more money. It's despicable. We've never seen anything like it, like the level of corruption and self-dealing in America before. MAGA grifters are getting rich off memecoins and the White House Lawn has been turned into a Tesla dealership. It makes Americans cringe. This is not the American way. This has not been the hallmark of our history.
And maybe most of all it’s been 100 days of costs—costs going up, and up and up because of tariffs, costs to working people because programs vital to them—Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, housing, SNAP—are being threatened or even already taken away, to some extent, and it will be a greater extent once we see their reconciliation bill.
So Donald Trump promised a “Golden Age” on the day he took the oath of office. What Americans are getting instead is fool’s gold.
Americans got corrosion, erosion, and rot—corrosion across his administration, erosion across our economy, rot within the foundations of our democracy.
So tonight Senate Democrats come to the floor to expose this administration for what it is:
A full-frontal attack against the fabric of America.
And a full frontal attack on our economy and on people’s pocket books.
A full frontal attack, finally, on working people and the middle class, to take away people's Medicaid, their Social Security, veterans care, health care and more, all to give tax cuts for the very wealthy.
Another way to describe this administration? Billionaires win, American families lose. There's a cabal of very greedy people who run the White House. They're rich. They have no understanding of what average Americans go through. And they plunder the government and then slash programs that we so desperately need for average families all for tax cuts for the rich. And there's a second thing they're doing. They're destroying the guardrails of government.
They're destroying every part of anything that opposes them all so they can take more money away from working people and give it to themselves.
So let's talk about it.
First, one hundred days of Donald Trump have meant one hundred days of rising costs.
For months before he became President, Donald Trump promised that, if elected, costs would go down, that America would be “affordable again.”
Well, prices haven’t gone down. Quite the opposite.
Groceries? Up.
Gas and energy prices? Up.
Clothes, cars, homes? Up.
But what about retirement savings? Down.
What about Consumer confidence? Down. In fact, consumer expectations are at their lowest levels in over a decade.
The stock market? On pace for its worst 100 days of any Presidential term since Nixon. What happened to Donald Trump bragging about the stock market, like he always liked to do? Not much to brag about these days!
No President in modern history has promised more on day one and delivered less by day one hundred than Donald Trump. In record time the President has turned a golden promise into an economic ticking time bomb—it’s getting worse every day, and he’s trying to call it progress! He says to people, “Americans won't mind paying more.” That is the arrogance of a billionaire. The arrogance of a billionaire.
Thanks to Donald Trump’s stupid trade war—which has failed to rein in countries like China—CEOs and small business owners are warning about rising prices, empty shelves, disrupted supply chains.
We urge national retailers to be honest with their constituents, with their customers. I urge national retailers: when you post prices online for your products, show the consumer exactly how much tariffs are adding to the total price. Show it to the American people because it's hurting you, retailers. Don't let them blame you. They should be blaming Trump.
Be honest with your customers and show them exactly how Donald Trump’s tariffs are making prices go up. Americans deserve to know who is picking their pockets.
And smaller businesses shouldn’t take the fall for Donald Trump’s disaster. His policies are forcing them into an impossible choice: hike your prices, or risk shutting your doors.
On Long Island, a Republican small business owner told me she is losing sleep over tariffs. She proudly voted for Donald Trump, but told me told me she’s seeing her costs rise 30%— she was frustrated. Frustrated the President she supported put her whole business which she put everything into at risk.
Donald Trump’s tariffs are a MAGA double whammy: not only are they eating away at people’s bottom lines, his chaotic approach makes it harder for people and businesses to plan ahead at all. You're a business. You don't know what he's going to do two weeks from now or five weeks from now so you don't spend. You don't build a new plant. You don't hire the new worker. Small businesses have to cut back because they don't have a cushion. Every business is getting clobbered by Donald Trump's chaotic tariff policies. And even if Donald Trump ended his tariffs tomorrow, the damage is already done because leaders don't know what he's going to do next.
It’s not just the tariffs, the prices and recession: Americans are worried about costs of cutting to their health care, cutting their Social Security, cutting Medicaid.
They're going to slash Medicaid!
I was in six of the Republican districts in New York state last week. All six had Democrats, Republicans, Independents frightened to death about what will happen if Medicaid is cut. They could lose their jobs. Elderly people could be kicked out of nursing homes. Health care would diminish for everybody.
And when they cut veterans, they're cutting the health care of veterans. These people who served us are told “go away.” And the cruelty with which they're firing people in the V.A. and other agencies. I know one woman, she was a former veteran. She served our country, risked her life, got injured. Got helped by the V.A. and decided to work there. She saw the good work they were doing. She loved her job. She didn't get paid that much but she loved helping her fellow veterans.
One night, Friday night, she comes home and on her computer is a message saying you're fired, don't show up at the office until further notice. This woman was distraught. Why was she fired? What did she do wrong? What of her services serving veterans at the Buffalo V.A. home, not services were not needed, were superfluous, were waste? There were none. Just cruelly fired.
Only an administration that exhibits a meanness, almost a viciousness would do it. But that's what Trump, DOGE, and Musk and all their henchmen who work there are doing. So this is just a terrible, terrible hundred days for anyone who depends on Medicaid, and that's about – that's a huge number. Tens of millions of people in America.
And there's also chaos in so many other places.
Every single day, Donald Trump’s administration lurches from one crisis to the next. For all their talk of bringing back “meritocracy,” their administration sure seems addicted to chaos and incompetence. Hardly meritocratic.
Every day we see a new decision, a new reversal, an new course-correction replace whatever came the day before, only to give way the next day to whatever impulsive decision comes next.
Tariffs are a great example. One day he says yes to tariffs.
The next day he says no. “I'm negotiating with countries.” “Oh, no, maybe I'm not.” This tariff is going to stay in place. This one will be reduced. Then he flips it. No, again, no business person, no sound business person is going to plan ahead. And that's why not. But places like the big banks and big analysts say the chances of a recession could be as high as 60%. What does a recession mean to the average family? You could get laid off. If you need to find a job, it's harder. Costs go up. Stagflation is likely to occur. It's nasty, brutal to people.
So chaos is there and there is also chaos, of course, in foreign policy.
I was amazed. Last week on one day Donald Trump over at the Vatican says, I had a great talk with Putin. And he acted like there was going to be a deal. The next day says “I had a terrible talk with Putin” and he didn't even talk to Putin in between. He makes it up.
Whatever he thinks will appeal to people that moment he says and he doesn't even know what appeals to people. It's really what appeals to his own ego which seems to be governing this country more than any rational policies or caring. The chaos makes Americans' heads spin. Firing people who manage our nuclear arsenal and then saying never mind, oops! But you know when you fire people, they don't all come back. And of course their morale is shaken. Good people who worked so hard for so long. So the long and short of it is this.
Donald Trump's hundred days, a hundred days of corruption, of cronyism, of higher costs, much higher costs to the American people. It really is awful.
The poll numbers show it but we don't need the poll numbers to tell us. We've all been back in our districts. We're hearing it.
You know, we're not just hearing it from Democrats. We're not just hearing it from people who are out on the streets protesting. We're hearing it to average folks would don't really care about politics but are getting hurt and it's making them look at Donald Trump and say “whoa, this is not what I bargained for.”
And of course last but not least is his threat to our democratic republic.
Donald Trump is acting not as a president but like a king, a mob-boss, a wannabe-dictator. He said he wanted to be a dictator on day one. Looks like he's extending it. Any quarter of opposition that might just say something in our tradition of free speech and debate he tries to crush, crush the law firms, crush the universities, go after the judges, which have been a foundation of our republic that judges are independent and are able to stop an executive that's going too far.
When the founders drafted our constitution, they feared a man like Donald Trump who sees the rule of law as a nuisance, who considers the truth an inconvenience, and who regards his fellow citizens as little more than subjects. Kiss the ring, bow before the throne, or watch your back: that is the ethos of Donald Trump.
He has moved with lighting speed to weaponize the federal government against anyone he thinks might oppose him. He does not believe in democracy, or debate, or in honest disagreement. He simply wants to crush his opponents. That’s what dictators do.
What is so interesting is Americans are as angry about that as they are about their higher costs, because the roots of democracy go deep. And the American people will not tolerate, will not tolerate, Donald Trump, your disruption, your threat, your trying to end in a sense our democracy.
So the good news is this: Donald Trump's destructive agenda has one great weakness, the American people themselves.
Most Americans vehemently reject the path which he is trying to take our country: on costs, on chaos, on corruption, on democracy.
The American people are not giving up. They are standing up. They are organizing. They are resisting.
And Democrats are standing with them, shoulder to shoulder, and with our country.
So as America marks 100 days of the worst president of our lifetimes, I ask American to look at this administration for what it is: a full frontal attack on the core elements of what America truly great – the rule of the people over kings and oligarchs; the rule of law and not the dictates of an authoritarian; respect for the rights of all people; and a commitment to “promoting the general welfare” for the whole of society. Not cruel and cheap scapegoating.
So let us commit ourselves, all of us Democrats here in the Senate against this administration and to uphold the core values and principles of this beautiful nation, which we must fight to preserve and protect.
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