Today, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation voted 16-12 to advance Howard Lutnick’s nomination to be Secretary of Commerce out of the Committee. Ahead of the vote, Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) delivered the following remarks on her decision to vote against the nominee, citing concerns over Trump’s trade policies and the nominee’s lack of commitment to uphold federal funding and programs.   

During the markup, the Committee also passed many bipartisan bills that the Committee and Sen. Cantwell worked to finalize last Congress, including Cantwell’s Promoting Resilient Supply Chains Act and Fire Ready Nation Act.

Republicans also voted 15-13 against an amendment brought forth by Sen. Markey on the Ticket Act that would make granting unauthorized access to the U.S. Treasury payment system a Federal Trade Commission violation. The amendment is in response to the news that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gained access to the department’s records, which includes American’s sensitive data such as social security numbers and tax information.

Watch Sen. Markey’s Remarks Here: “It is difficult to sit here and hold a bipartisan markup when President Trump and Elon Musk and their team of government arsonists are blatantly violating the law by withholding federal funds, seizing control of critical government systems, and even proposing to eliminate whole agencies by executive fiat…I filed Markey Amendment Number One on my own legislation, the Ticket Act, to address an especially concerning abuse of government power.”

Sen. Cantwell said before the vote on the Markey amendment: “We do not want the privacy of American citizens to be violated. We know that we have international adversaries who are also looking for this information and using it against us. That is why our own system has been hacked by them. So I want every precaution necessary to make sure that the privacy of U.S. citizens is guaranteed. The notion that this process has taken place, I think is unprecedented. What kind of personal data is at risk? Social security numbers, bank account information, home addresses, tax records…I will fight and continue to fight any administration that is somehow going to give an easy path to something that I believe needs to be defended.”

Excerpts from Ranking Member Cantwell’s Opening Remarks as Delivered: VIDEO

Let me too start by, in this forum, recognizing the tragic events of two air accidents in the last week, DCA and in Philadelphia, Mr. Chairman, our heart goes out to these families for the tragedies they are suffering, for the long-term impacts that they will have from this, and the remaining questions that they want us to answer.

I am dedicated, Mr. Chairman, to moving quickly once we have information on resolutions of issues that will enhance the air safety of our system.

Having worked both during COVID, and in 25 days working with Senator Wicker, we came up with a transportation solution to what we needed to do for our airspace during that time period. And also working with Senator Wicker in short order after the two MAX crashes to push and finalize through Congress a major aviation safety bill.

It is imperative that we tell the families we are going to have the same fervor now in getting aviation safety enhancements that will prevent this from happening again.

I hope that we can work together in a very bipartisan fashion, along with our two colleagues, Senator Duckworth and Senator Moran, the subcommittee chair and ranking member on doing that.

And I take the President at his word. The President says he wants to see an increase in aviation infrastructure. He's frustrated by the fact that, on a global basis the system of digitizing our airspace off a radar has moved faster than the United States. So great, Mr. President, we will be calling on you for your help in that effort.

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On the Lutnick nomination, since the hearing last week, the Trump Administration has taken a series of unprecedented actions that I find very concerning.

I'm very concerned about the President's threat to our North American neighbors and massive tariffs… In fact, the Wall Street Journal called it “The Dumbest Trade War in History.”

Tariffs and trade wars are a major problem for my state, where two out of every five jobs are tied to trade-related industries. My state imports $20 billion of goods from Canada, primarily oil, gas, lumber and electric power, making our northern border with Washington one of our largest trading partners.

We just got a reprieve for this 25% crazy tariffs, that the Commerce Secretary has said he's advocating for. The President's policy, would cost my constituents $5 billion or more.

We need a secretary that understands that these products and these issues need coalition building, not throwing down gauntlets that will lose jobs for my farmers.

Over the last four years, there has been much investment in infrastructure for manufacturing that this Committee has supported: semiconductor expansion, $450 billion right here in the United States, thanks to the CHIPS and Science Act. And Mr. Lutnick, in various answers to various members on the Committee, did not give a full commitment to making sure this money continues to go out the door. These awards are crucial to catalyzing domestic chip manufacturing states like Texas, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

And we heard from many members on both sides of the aisle about whether he would make continued investments in other areas, tech hubs, NOAA, which you just mentioned, makes up more than 60% of the Commerce budget. When asked for the record if NOAA should be dismantled, called for in [Project 2025], Mr. Lutnick would only say, if confirmed, he would figure it out.

Given how central NOAA is for providing accurate weather forecasting, managing our fisheries, protecting our fishermen from Russian and Chinese illegal fishing, I was looking for a stronger commitment.

And last week at the hearing, I asked Mr. Lutnick about the 19.3 billion illicit transactions for Tether and whether we needed to be more aggressive at doing something about that given the unbelievable amount of volume of North Korean, South Asian and various criminal activities on the Tether platform.

He said, at some point, software will solve that problem. Well, having been in the software sector, yes, someday it might. But right now, I want to stop the amount of money laundering going through these organizations, and I would hope that he would commit to something much more aggressive than that.

Lastly, I thought we had a pretty good answer in the Finance Committee to Mr. Bessent when asked about the same issues of Treasury settlements, you cannot have someone advocating – that treasuries could get settled on a foreign exchange at a time when we can't even raise the debt ceiling and then have them prioritize the debt away from the United States. I just can't accept his answer.

I hope that we will be proven wrong. But today, my advice and consent is not to vote for Mr. Lutnick.

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Mr. Chairman, I'd like to turn to the bills at hand, and as I mentioned in my previous comments, I support this markup and 17 bills that are on here. Twelve were advanced out of the Committee last Congress, and five of those passed the Senate. So I hope we get them now through the House and all the way to the President's desk.

And separately, five additional bills were negotiated with our House colleagues, which shows a great deal of bipartisan work from our colleagues and what they have done to try to move progress.

I very much appreciate S.99 Strengthening Support for American Manufacturers by Senators Peter and Blackburn.

I very much support the Drives Act by Senators Fischer, Duckworth, and Blackburn.

The Promoting Resilient Supply Chain that I authored with our colleagues, Senator Blackburn and Blount Rochester, because I think this is a very ripe issue for our Committee to continue to focus on.

I so much appreciate the support of the Ticket Act by Senators Schmidt and Markey.

The Fire Ready Nation, by myself and Senator Sheehy. I look forward to working with him as the Pacific Northwest has been a pretty good,

let's just say, I don't know whether Senator Sheehy agrees, but I think we probably have at least a 10-year run on everybody else already on dealing with this problem. So our ideas about technologies and solutions that have worked already that need to be expedited. I think we have a good viewpoint on that.

And then the AM Radio bill, Mr. Chairman, very much appreciate your and Senator Markey’s continued push for this legislation. I represent a state prone to natural disasters. I don't know what to say, whether it's Mount St. Helens, whether it's the fires I just mentioned, unbelievable flooding given the big storms that we're hit with, and I like the notion that we are going to have good old fashioned AM radio and car radios. I just think that we need to continue to have emergency response for people and think outside the box of how to skill that. Now you think, well, that doesn't sound… well, go read the article that somebody wrote called “The Big One.” Is the big one going to hit the Pacific Northwest? Are we going to be at a point where we're going to be devastated from a grand implosion volcano experience that might just cause a lahar from Mount Rainier. The consequences are as devastating as some of the major events in Louisiana and the South. So I hope that we will do something that thinks outside the box on how to keep communication going and not just respond to some of the requests by people that think that the digital solution is just the only solution.

And lastly, Mr. Chairman, not on the agenda, but I hope that we will continue our focus on rail safety. I know the Vice President went to East Palestine, and I look forward to working with you on that issue.