congressional_record: CREC-2025-06-28-pt1-PgS3663-3
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| CREC-2025-06-28-pt1-PgS3663-3 | 2025-06-28 | 119 | 1 | H.R. 1 | SENATE | SENATE | ALLOTHER | S3663 | S3675 | [{"name": "Mark Kelly", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Tammy Baldwin", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Mazie K. Hirono", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Raphael G. Warnock", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Margaret Wood Hassan", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Michael F. Bennet", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Adam B. Schiff", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Ben Ray Lujan", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Andy Kim", "role": "speaking"}, {"name": "Alex Padilla", "role": "speaking"}] | [{"congress": "119", "type": "HR", "number": "1"}] | 171 Cong. Rec. S3663 | Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 112 (Saturday, June 28, 2025) [Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 112 (Saturday, June 28, 2025)] [Senate] [Pages S3663-S3675] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] H.R. 1 Mr. KELLY. Mr. President, what are we doing here? Seriously. I am still waiting for somebody to tell me how this makes sense. We are debating a budget that gives another round of tax cuts to billionaires and giant corporations on the backs of everyday Americans. And it also adds trillions of dollars to our national debt. That doesn't make any sense to me. And it doesn't make sense to the Arizonans that I have been hearing from in every corner of our State. If you grew up in a household like mine where money was tight, you would know that budgets are about priorities. I can still picture my mom sitting at the kitchen table trying to figure out which bills to pay. You take the money you have, and you put it where it is needed. This budget clearly tells the American people who President Trump and Republicans in Washington think need help. If you are a billionaire, it says: We have got your back. But if you are a parent trying to provide for your family, a senior in a nursing home, or a child who counts on school for your only hot meal, you are on your own. This isn't about balancing the books. It is about picking winners and letting everyone else fall behind. And who loses? It is the Americans working two jobs, raising kids, caring for elderly parents, and just trying to stay afloat, because if you grew up in a family like mine, you also know how hard people work to reach their American dream--the promise that if you work hard, your kids will get a good public education, you will be able to put food on the table, you will be able to go to the doctor and stay healthy, and your kids will be able to grow up and achieve their own American dream. This promise is already getting harder, and it is getting more expensive. We need to be working together across the aisle to ensure that everyone who works hard can have a brighter future. But that is not what my Republican colleagues are doing with this bill. The plan that they are jamming through right now will put the American dream out of reach for more families. And for what? To hand out more tax breaks to people with more wealth than they could spend in 10 lifetimes. Now, I have spent the last several months traveling across Arizona. I have been to our big cities Phoenix and Tucson. I have been to small towns like Clarkdale and Sierra Vista--talking to Arizonans face-to- face, listening to their stories, hearing what it would mean to them if Medicaid, food assistance, and other essential services got cut for them and their families. What I have heard is clear: This budget is going to make it harder for them to stay afloat, let alone get ahead. In Clarkdale, I met a guy named Christian. He is a rural hospital nephrologist. That is a kidney doctor. And he told me that his patients--many of whom rely on Medicaid for dialysis--are now considering stopping treatment altogether because they might not be able to afford it. He said: Financially, none of the patients I serve can pay out of pocket. It's a choice of either massive debt or death. That is the reality to many rural communities. Another woman told me about her friend, a survivor of two car accidents and a spinal injury. Her friend relies on Medicaid to help her deal with her chronic pain. Without it--meaning Medicaid--she said that her friend might end her life because the pain is unbearable. She asked me to deliver this message to my colleagues. She said: This is not a country that can't afford to care for people like her. We can afford to care for everyone--if we change our priorities from giving tax cuts to billionaires to taking care of Americans who are in pain every day. People across Arizona are pleading with us to get our priorities right. In Sierra Vista, I hosted a Medicaid townhall, and that is where I met this woman named Tara. She told us how she was once a single mother and how programs like Medicaid and SNAP helped her raise her kid and build a stable life. Today, she works a good job. She doesn't rely on these programs anymore, but here is what she said: I'm deeply concerned about the proposed cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and related programs. I know firsthand that they don't just help families--they're often the only path to stability. Just last week, I was in Tucson where I live--where Gabby and I live--helping distribute school lunches at a local high school. It is actually the high school that my wife went to. And I wanted to see firsthand what these summer meal programs mean for Arizona families. These programs are funded through the United States Department of Agriculture, and they rely on data from SNAP and Medicaid to identify the children who need them the most. If this bill passes, a bunch of these kids that I served--I think it was last weekend--they won't be eligible for these programs anymore. It will be harder for them to access school meals which, I think we all know, compromises their academic performance. That is the real cost of this legislation. It is not numbers on a spreadsheet. It is hunger. It is illness. It is fear. It is a bunch of folks who work really hard doing everything right, and they are still going to get punched in the gut. And it is not just what I hear in person. My office gets hundreds of letters and phone calls every week from Arizonans. People are scared, and they want us to listen. I want to share some of their voices. Frank is a veteran on dialysis. He called this week, and he said: The food bank and my SNAP benefits are the only way I eat right now. I can't work. I'm not old enough to retire, and I'm dipping into my retirement early just to keep up with my mortgage. Without this help, I don't know what I will do. Veterans should never have to say those words in this country. One of the most sacred promises we make to the men and women who serve is that we will take care of them when they return home. That promise doesn't end when they hang up the uniform. It includes making sure that they can afford food, access healthcare, and live with some dignity. And yet here is Frank--sick, struggling, and wondering how he will survive because the programs he relies on are under threat. Cheryl from Tucson, who is a 59-year-old widow, said: [[Page S3664]] I receive Disabled Widow's Benefits, Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP. Get this. She said: My rent and utilities eat all but about $300 of my monthly income. SNAP and my healthcare card used to cover most of my food costs. I used to have about $40 left over to buy some extra groceries for the unsheltered in my area. So here is a woman with $40 extra, and she is helping other people. She also says: Now, buying food for my household takes all of it. I'm scared. If I lose even one of these benefits, I'll lose the grip that keeps the roof over my head. Karen from Scottsdale has worked for over 25 years helping veterans and people with disabilities. She wrote: Many of the people I work with rely on Medicaid because they can only work part-time or because their employers don't offer benefits. Cutting them off will just make healthcare more expensive for everyone. The rich do not need an extension on tax cuts at the expense of low-income and middle-class families. These are my constituents. These are folks who, unprompted, took time to write or call their Senator. And every single one of them is saying the same thing: We are barely holding on, and we are scared this is going to put us over the edge. Now, I wish I could say that these stories were met with compassion by everybody here. But, instead, one of my Republican colleagues apparently said: They'll get over it. And another, when asked whether cutting Medicaid would cost lives, said: Well, we are all going to die anyway. Now, I didn't come here to throw jabs. I am repeating those words because they reveal how this budget was written without any connection to the real-world consequences. This isn't about politics. It is about people. So I ask again: What are we doing here? Who do we serve? Is it people like Tara and Cheryl and Crystal and Frank who are working hard and doing everything right to just try to get by? Or is it a bunch of billionaires who have already made it and who don't need another handout? If my colleagues don't believe me, I urge them to go read some of the emails and listen to some of the phone calls that they are getting. Maybe hold a townhall, listen to those folks, really listen to what they are saying. Don't crush their American dream. Don't rig the system even more against them. Don't take a vote just because it is easy. We can do better for the people we serve. Mr. President, they deserve that from us. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin. Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I rise today in disbelief. That may sound a little cheesy, but at the end of the day, I fundamentally believe in public service. I believe it can be a force for good, a force that gives people opportunity, a force that is people-powered, that can lift our neighbors up and instill hope, a force that meets the toughest challenges of our constituents. And that is why I am struck with disbelief. Disbelief because if you believe these things like I do--which I would argue most of my colleagues here do--why would you be jamming this bill through? At a time when Wisconsin families are asking us to take on the high cost of living and let them have a fair shot at success, Republicans are raising costs and making an already unfair tax system even worse. My Republican colleagues are not using their time and energy to go after greedy corporations, not to lower the cost of housing, and not to expand access to affordable healthcare. But, rather, they are, instead, forging ahead with a bill that will kick millions of Americans off their health insurance, jack up prices for care for millions more, and literally take food off the tables of hungry families. Look, I was on the same ballot as Donald Trump last year. I heard the same concerns from my constituents that he did. Families needed some breathing room. My Republican colleagues often say that this President's victory gave him a ``mandate.'' Well, then, the President and I got the same mandate: to lower costs and give people the opportunity to live a steady and comfortable life. But in response, the difference could not be more stark. I am actually working to do something about it, and this bill--the landmark bill from this President and the Republican Party-- does just the opposite and will raise costs for families. One of the biggest cost drivers I hear about is healthcare. Instead of standing up to big drug companies to lower prescription drug costs and instead of building on the Affordable Care Act to expand access to healthcare coverage, this bill actually terminates coverage for Americans. In fact, 17 million Americans will be kicked off either Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act because of this bill. That is like stripping healthcare coverage from the entire populations of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa combined. These aren't just numbers; these are people. They are people who have stories, and they matter. I should know. After battling a childhood illness, I became one of those Americans labeled as having a preexisting health condition, and insurance companies were legally able to deny me coverage. But because of the Affordable Care Act, we changed that. We gave families like mine hope--hope that they can get healthcare at a price they can afford and sleep well at night knowing they have coverage. Medicaid has given that same hope for generations to some of our most vulnerable neighbors. But with this bill, my Republican colleagues are instilling fear. When we talk about Medicaid, we are talking about the elderly, people with disabilities, and children. We are talking about a single mother of three who is struggling to make ends meet and so many more. I have traveled the State of Wisconsin from Superior to Racine, La Crosse to Green Bay and everywhere in between, to hear from people who will be harmed by this bill. I have come to this very floor to share their stories, to try to help my Republican colleagues understand what this bill will mean. But it is not just the folks who need Medicaid to survive who are sounding the alarm. Take it from Dr. Abbigayle Willgruber, a family medical resident in rural Wisconsin. She said that this bill ``will deprive millions of Americans, particularly children, seniors, and individuals with disabilities, of the care they need to survive.'' She, continued saying: These provisions will limit my ability to complete my job to the fullest, will lead to worse outcomes for patients. Or take it from Rosangela Berbert, the executive director of an outpatient counseling center in the Fox Valley in Wisconsin, who said: Without Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements or with reduced rates, our nonprofit will struggle to survive. She continued: I would hate to consider cutting staff or programs, but that could become our only option. We would lose the ability to serve hundreds of clients--not because the need has diminished, but because we could no longer afford to provide care without reimbursement. I have more and more of these stories from doctors, nurses, and administrators on the ground who are spelling out the absolutely dire consequences of this bill. In Wisconsin, we are already in a crisis when it comes to getting good healthcare in our rural communities. The system is broken, and this bill is destined to make it even worse. While healthcare is near and dear to my heart, there is more bad news in this bill. Republicans' big betrayal will also take food assistance--the literal means by which some people are able to put nutritious food on the table--away from them. This bill will take SNAP assistance--our Nation's best way to make sure that no one goes hungry--away for more than 3 million Americans. That leads us to the why. Republicans are making all of these cuts so that they can rig our Tax Code, which I must say already is deeply unfair to working families. They would further tilt it in favor of the biggest corporations and the richest in our country. The Republican bill gives people at the top one-tenth of 1 percent, the richest of the rich, a tax cut of more than $250,000 every year-- yes, a quarter of a million dollars a year. All the while, this bill hits working families the hardest. When taking into account the disastrous Medicaid and [[Page S3665]] SNAP cuts, many working families would see their annual incomes fall by over $1,500. It doesn't have to be this way. Yes, our system for taxes and healthcare is broken, but this bill is not the solution. This bill would make it harder for working families to have the opportunity to get ahead, harder for parents to get their kids healthcare, and harder for families to put food on the table. We, Democrats and Republicans, should be working together to give some relief to workers, but instead Republicans will choose to go it alone and vote to give the biggest corporations and the wealthy another unfair leg up. I will end with this: While I remain in disbelief and, frankly, disgust, I will always have hope. I have hope because it is not the people in this Chamber with the power; it is the people. It is the people who will sadly feel the repercussions of this bill. It is the people who are rising up and will hold anyone who passes this disastrous bill accountable. That is where the true power is. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Britt). The Senator from Hawaii. Ms. HIRONO. Madam President, Democratic Senators have been on the floor for hours today pointing out what is in this thousand-page bill that took over 16 hours to read. I call it the thousand pages of pain and the billionaires' gain. It is bad enough that my colleagues have been on the floor talking about how this bill is going to hurt people on Medicaid, taking food away from our children and families through major cuts to the SNAP program--healthcare, food, housing, energy support, you name it, the pain is in this bill--but one of the areas that people don't know about is that this bill actually has provisions that would take away support for our public schools. Let that sink in. It is not enough that this bill has a thousand pages of pain in just about every aspect of our lives that you can think of, but now they are coming after support for our public schools. So today, I am rising as an advocate for the 49 million children who are enrolled in public schools across our country. Nearly 90 percent of K through 12 students go to public schools, including 95 percent of children with disabilities. Yet we have a regime that is actively working to end Federal support for public schools. We have a President who tried to totally eliminate the Department of Education, and, sadly for him, he can't do it through Executive order because only Congress can do that. But they are doing a lot of other things that withhold support for public schools. So, as you know, Republicans in Congress are trying to undermine support for public schools through the first-ever national private school voucher program. Let that sink in--the first-ever national private school voucher program. That is taking money away from public schools and basically turning it over to private schools through a voucher program. So let's be clear. The school voucher program provision isn't about money for schools; it is about even more money for billionaires because they are the folks who are going to get the most out of this voucher for private schools program. Under this program, wealthy donors would receive large handouts for supporting school vouchers. This is a Washington Post headline: GOP voucher plan would divert billions-- Four billion a year-- in taxes in perpetuity to private schools. So, specifically, the plan would provide a dollar-for-dollar tax credit. We are not talking about tax deductions; we are talking about a tax credit. This is money that comes right off your taxable amount. So what this bill would do is provide a tax credit of $5,000 or 10 percent of a taxpayer's adjusted gross income, whichever is greater. So a taxpayer making $10 million--we do have people who make $10 million a year--could contribute $1 million and receive a credit for that full amount. How do you like that? You can get a million dollars off your tax bill by contributing to this private school voucher program. So rather than calling this plan what it is--and I tell you, the word ``scam'' comes to my mind; it is like scamming the public schools-- Republicans are deceitfully trying to sell this plan as an expansion of school choice for families. Oh, isn't this voucher program great? More families can send their kids to private school. Here is the reality: Based on what we know about school voucher programs, they do not promote school choice. Let me give you two examples of why this argument does not hold water. For one thing, school vouchers do not cover the full cost of private school tuition. When was the last time anybody thought about how much private schools cost? You know, schools in Hawaii--private schools can cost something on the order of $15 to $20,000 a year, starting from kindergarten. A voucher program will not support that full amount. That means that families who want to send their kids to these private schools will have to make up the cost difference. Well, how many middle-income, low- income families will be able to exercise that choice to send their child to a private school that costs that much? Not only that, as we have seen in States that have passed voucher programs, private schools often raise their tuition when they become eligible for vouchers. Iowa is an example. After they approved vouchers in 2022, private schools there increased their prices by over 20 percent for kindergarten and by over 10 percent for other grade levels. Here is another example on this argument that this program promotes choice. There are fewer private schools in rural communities. So many families do not have access to private schools if they live in rural communities. How does this expand choice for these families? The reality is the majority of vouchers have gone to wealthy families and to subsidizing school tuition for students who already attend private schools. Under this bill, Republicans will make that even worse by prioritizing scholarships for these students. I am going to repeat that because not only is it bad enough that we are going to divert all of this money, basically, to private schools, but this bill actually has a provision that says people who will get these scholarships are students who already go to private schools. In Louisiana, for example, the 99 percent of voucher tax credits there went to families with annual incomes above 200,000. In Virginia, the number was 87 percent of vouchers in that State going to wealthy families. In Arizona, it was 60 percent. Americans have consistently rejected school voucher programs and initiatives. Nebraska, Kentucky, and Colorado have all voted against voucher programs within the last year. In Nebraska, school vouchers were put on the ballot last November, and they were soundly defeated for the fourth time. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue. Nebraska is a red State. They voted for a Republican President by a 20-point margin, and yet they rejected school vouchers with 57 percent of the vote. The bottom line is this: Vouchers take money away from public schools, and Americans of all political stripes understand that. According to All4Ed, over two-thirds of voters would rather increase funding for public schools than increase funding for voucher programs. That is not a new sentiment. In all 17 State referendums on school vouchers since 1967, voters have rejected these programs. While the Republicans in this Chamber may not give a rip about public schools, the vast majority of Americans get it. Democrats, Republicans, Independents alike support strengthening our public schools, not taking money away from our public schools, because they know that strong public education is fundamental to a strong country. Well, undeterred by public sentiment, Republicans are trying to create, as I mentioned, a nationwide school voucher program. It is not enough that some States have voucher programs, but now the Republicans, through this misguided, almost-thousand-pages-of-pain bill, want to provide $4 billion per year for a private school voucher program, with no accountability. Remember, early on, I said that a huge percentage of children with disabilities go to public schools. Well, private schools do not have any responsibility to make sure that they are providing education for children with disabilities. So there is no accountability. [[Page S3666]] Let's just provide $4 billion per year, in perpetuity, in tax credits for private school programs that have no accountability along these lines. We all know that this kind of funding could be used for rural and low-income schools, for students with disabilities, for other programs that actually support and strengthen public schools. Instead, under the Republicans' plan, that funding would go to wealthy donors who will receive large handouts, up to $4 billion a year for supporting school vouchers. Again, this plan will enable a taxpayer making $10 million a year to contribute 1 million and receive a dollar-for-dollar credit for that full amount. And even worse, the taxpayer could contribute appreciated stock and avoid capital gains on their appreciation. And there is all kinds of data on who owns stocks in this country, and generally it is the people with a lot of wealth. So this bill had a provision that enabled people to donate appreciated stock so that they could escape capital gains taxes on that stock contribution totally. So this Republican voucher proposal, outlandish as it is, was briefly delayed after it was deemed noncompliant with budget rules earlier this week. Republicans remain undeterred. They have decided to plow forward with a nearly identical plan. When it comes down to it, this plan does not help students. It does not promote choice. It does not support public schools, where the majority of our kids go. We should be supporting our public schools, not taking resources away from them. So my Democratic colleagues and I will continue to fight to fund quality public schools, to improve public education in this country-- foundational. This voucher plan is yet another wrong-headed proposal that should be called out for what it is: a handout for the wealthy at the expense of hard-working American families. I urge my colleagues to reject this idea. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia. Mr. WARNOCK. Madam President, I rise tonight in our moral moment in our Nation. As we debate this bill, so much is on the line. The healthcare of over 16 million Americans--750,000 of them Georgians--is on the line. Food for hungry children in a wealthy nation, where one in five children are already food insecure. They don't know where their next meal is coming from. Their livelihood, their welfare is on the line. The well-being of seniors in nursing homes and the disabled who rely on Medicaid and those who care for them is on the line. The fate of rural hospitals in Georgia, in Alaska, in Louisiana, in little towns all over this Nation that are right now barely hanging on is on the line. And the scraps that they are throwing them, while cutting them, will not save them. And my friends on the other side of the aisle know it. They know that these scraps that they are throwing at rural hospitals will not save them. And so in a very real sense, lives are on the line. We are in a moral moment because something else is on the line. I submit that the character of the country is on the line. In a real sense, the question tonight is, Who are we? Not who we tell ourselves we are, but who are we really? What and who do we care about? What kind of nation are we? And what kind of people do we want to be? Who matters, and who doesn't? Who do we think is dispensable? And no place is the answer to that question clearer than in a nation's budget. I submit that a budget is not just a fiscal document; a budget is a moral document. Show me your budget, and I will show you who you think matters and who doesn't. And if this awful budget were an EKG, it would suggest that our Nation has a heart problem and is in need of moral surgery. And so I am clear tonight. I understand the nature of what we are engaged in. This is a political process; it is. But it is also a moral exercise, not only for the Nation but for each of us individually, and especially for the mere 100 of us out of a nation of 300 million who get to vote, perhaps in a matter of hours. We have the rare privilege of standing up for people who have entrusted with us the covenant of centering their families. It is a real privilege for the people of your State to say that since we can't all go to Washington, we are going to trust you in rooms of power to be thinking about our children, to be thinking about our parents as they deal with the blessings and the burdens of growing old. And so the question for me tonight is, How will we will show up in this moment? And that is why yesterday I gathered in the Russell rotunda with a multifaith coalition of clergy to pray that lawmakers might have the courage to stand up to their party, to stand up to the special interests, and protect seniors in nursing homes and pregnant mothers on Medicaid and children who risk going to school hungry every single day in this country. One in five children in the wealthiest Nation on the planet are already food insecure. And with these SNAP cuts, this body is about to make it worse. And so surrounded by clergy of many faith traditions, yesterday, I prayed that we would have the courage and I prayed that we would have the grace to stand as voices for the voiceless. And as I stood there, I could not help but feel a sense of deja vu. This is not the first time I have been in our Nation's Capital speaking out against these policies that betray hard-working families. It was 8 years ago almost to the day in 2017 when Washington Republicans were trying to pass a tax bill that favored wealthy Americans over working families that I came to this building, not as a Senator but as a pastor. I had no idea that 8 years later I would be serving in this body. I had no notion that I would even run for the Senate. I came as a citizen. And standing with a multifaith coalition, we were praying for our Nation's leaders, and we were gathered in the rotunda of the Russell Building. And, as we were singing and praying, the Capitol Police said: I am sorry, pastors. You can't sing and pray in the rotunda. If you do not disperse, we will have to arrest you. And let me say that the Capitol Police did not mishandle us that day. They were first-rate professionals. But they said that if you don't disperse, we will have to arrest you. What they didn't understand is that I had already been arrested. My conscience had been arrested. My heart and my imagination--my moral imagination--had been arrested by this idea that we, as a country, are better than this. I come from a tradition where you don't just pray with your lips; you pray with your legs. You put your body in the struggle for other struggling bodies. And so here I am tonight, 8 years later, having transformed my agitation into legislation. I was arrested that day, but I have transformed my protest into public policy. Eight years ago, I was on the outside. Tonight, I am on the inside, but it is the same fight. Some of us fight on the inside; some of us fight on the outside. Some of us get to serve in the Senate or in the House; others are just watching at home tonight. But be really clear that we are in the same fight, whether we are on the streets or in the suites--same fight. In some ways, this is the same bill 8 years later, just worse. Like most horror movies, the sequel tends to be worse. When we were here 8 years ago, Washington politicians were trying their best to gut the Affordable Care Act. Remember that? When we were here, they were trying to gut ObamaCare out of political motives. Millions of Americans were spared, but tonight is the sequel to that horror movie. They are back to their old political tricks, trying to dismantle the ACA again with this legislation. It is the same fight, just worse this time. Instead of extending tax credits that would lower health insurance costs for the middle class, my friends on the other side are giving billionaires and the richest of the rich a tax cut. They are working real hard tonight to help billionaires because, God knows, they are having a hard time, apparently. What that means is that 1.2 million Georgians and nearly 20 million Americans are going to see their healthcare premiums rise. That is what is at stake tonight. If they enact these deep cuts to Medicaid, as they are positioned not to extend these premiums, these tax credits, they are raising the cost of [[Page S3667]] healthcare for all of us. Even if you are on private insurance, you are not safe. Your healthcare is about to go up. Your hospital might close. And because they are cutting these clean energy tax cuts, your utility bills are about to go up. So I have a question tonight. Who voted for that? Some of us are Democrats. Some of us are Republicans. Some of us are Independents. Some voted for one party; some voted for the other party. I get it. But who voted for that? Who voted for everybody's healthcare premiums to go up and their hospitals to close? Here is what I know. The folks back in Georgia didn't vote for that. They voted for me, and they voted for Donald Trump, but they didn't vote for that. Ordinary folks don't want this. Just ordinary, everyday people who barely pay attention to politics, they don't want this. Even a FOX News poll--and you won't often hear me say that--but even a FOX News poll from this month found that Americans don't support this ``Big Ugly Bill.'' This is systemic in the ways in which the people's voices have been squeezed out of their democracy. This is not just a healthcare fight, it is that. It is not just a fight for food security for SNAP, it is that. But in the real sense, it is a fight for our democracy. Whose voice gets to be heard in this Chamber? That is what this is about, the character of the country. Ordinary Americans don't want to do this to our children. That is why they need to know that 71 percent of all Medicaid enrollees in Georgia are children--71 percent. They are taking away healthcare from kids to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. Let me be clear. I am all for tax cuts. I believe working families deserve a tax cut, and I certainly don't want to see them face a tax hike this year. That is why I want to nearly double the child tax credit. I believe in tax cuts for hard-working families, for middle- class people, for working-class families. Instead of doing that, instead of helping working-class families who are struggling now against a 10-percent tax on everything and rising costs, we are now burdening our children by adding $3 trillion to the debt. We are taking away healthcare from kids and then burdening them with the debt. We are engaged in Robin Hood in reverse, this body, of stealing from the poor in order to give to the rich; this massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top. This is socialism for the rich. And when the people hear about it, guess what. They don't like it-- Democrats and Republicans and Independents. When the people hear about what is in this ``Big Ugly Bill,'' they don't like it. And that is why the folks on the other side are trying their best to fast-track it. That is why they are trying to pass it, and they haven't even finished writing it. They are twisting themselves in knots, making their Members walk the plank under the threat of a primary to pass this ``Big Ugly Bill.'' The American people do not want to rob our children of food and healthcare and then burden them with trillions in debt to give billionaires and wealthy corporations another tax cut. The people do not want this bill. So if the people do not want this bill, but they are trying to pass it, here is the question that you have to ask yourselves at home. You have to ask yourselves: Well, whom are they working for? Whom are they fighting for? Who do they think matters? Do you think they are working for you? This is a moral moment and a budget is a moral document. We have been summoned to this moment, people of faith and people of moral courage who claim no particular faith at all. Maybe because I was here yesterday and 8 years ago for a similar fight with faith leaders; maybe because I am a preacher and it is Sunday and I have been here instead of church, I have especially been thinking about those of us who are people of faith, people whose lives are informed by Scripture, people of the Book. And maybe those of us who have different politics but read from the same Book ought to spend some time together reading the Book because I do sometimes wonder--and I say this with all humility. None of us owns the truth. But if I am honest, there are days when I have to ask people of my faith tradition as a Christian, are we reading the same Book? The Book I know says: I was hungry and you fed me. I was sick, I was in prison, and you visited me. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. In as much as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it unto me. The Book that I love says: Learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of the destitute. Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and the needy. My Book says: Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord and will be repaid in full. The prophet Amos condemns those who ``buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.'' They sell the poor out and working-class people for cheap. And for those of us who have a vote in this moment, for my colleagues who are swinging on a moral dilemma, I hear the prophet Micah say: He has already told you what is good. What does the Lord require of you but that you do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. May God be with our Nation and grant us grace, wisdom, and courage for this moment. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire. Ms. HASSAN. Madam President, first, I want to thank my colleagues and, especially just now, my colleague from Georgia, for their work tonight, for their expression of what is at stake in this moment. And to Senator Warnock, I say thank you and amen. I am here today because I am joining the majority of Americans who are deeply alarmed by this plan from the President and his congressional allies, a plan that will make life less affordable for more Americans. When we return home for this Fourth of July, it would be nice to be able to tell our constituents that we came together and passed bipartisan legislation to help bring down costs for families. Instead, my colleagues who vote for this legislation will have to explain why, at a time when families' pocketbooks are strained, they chose to support a partisan bill to make American life even less affordable. What will America look like once this bill takes effect? Millions of people will have lost their health coverage thanks to the largest cut to Medicaid in American history. More people won't be able to afford preventive care and cancer screenings, and more people will get sick. Healthcare premiums will surge for everyone because fewer people will have care, and the number of uninsured Americans will increase. Rural hospitals will close their doors because they lost Medicaid reimbursements that help keep them afloat. More people, especially in States like mine, will have to make long car rides just to get to a hospital 50 miles away in those desperate moments when minutes feel like hours and hours like eternities. Seniors will be thrown into grave peril because this bill threatens hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts. And once this plan eviscerates food assistance programs, it will be much harder for families to afford to put food on the table at a time when groceries are already far too expensive. Let there be no mistake, more families and children who today are being fed will go hungry, and all the while our children will be burdened with trillions more in debt. In the name of what cause is all this done? Well, it is all to pay for tax breaks for billionaires. This bill will also make us an America where our people are less free. In New Hampshire, during my time as Governor, we adopted Medicaid expansion with support from both political parties, and we balanced the budget at the same time. We understood that, with health, comes freedom: the freedom to work and provide for one's family; the freedom from disease and despair; the freedom that comes from--why do I even have to say this?--being alive. Granite Staters also understood that a great country like ours treats its people with great dignity. In America, we don't sacrifice the health of our [[Page S3668]] neighbors, and we don't let families fall sick. We do not imperil our economy, our debt, and our workforce just to pay for a tax giveaway for a billionaire. So what kind of country will we be with this bill? We will not only be less healthy, but we will be less prosperous and less free. In short, this bill is at odds with what we aspire to be as Americans. It is also worth noting how remarkably out of step this bill is with the American people's plea to bring down costs. In a democracy like ours, theoretically, the people's representatives pass legislation that reflects the aspirations of the majority. I say ``theoretically'' because, clearly, that is not what is happening today. Indeed, according to the data from the Joint Economic Committee minority, if one combines this bill with the President's tariffs, then firefighters, truckdrivers, and teachers, for instance, will lose $470 or more next year while the top 0.1 percent--who are the people who earn about $4 million or more--will be $348,000 richer. This bill would take away healthcare from tens of thousands of Granite Staters and would take a similar toll across the country. Indeed, in both Florida and Texas, the number of people who will lose their health insurance is greater than the entire population of New Hampshire--millions of people losing care with a stroke of a pen. What have these people done to deserve that? All the American people are asking for is for us to help bring down costs. So the President and the Republicans in Congress take away their healthcare? Sometimes in Washington, we are faced with bills that fail to fully meet the moment, to be sure, but it is rare to find legislation like this: a bill that makes life less affordable during a time when Americans of every political stripe are crying out for lower costs; a bill that seems as if it was drafted just to make a mockery of the wills and wishes of the majority of the people in this country. Lately, many of my colleagues and some political pundits have been talking about this bill as if it were inevitable--a runaway freight train so vast that it cannot be stopped. In light of this inevitability, they suggest that some of the bill's deficiencies can just be overlooked. But, of course, this bill was not inevitable, nor is it now. So let's be clear: Each and every Senator in this body has free will--God-given free will--which means that the measures in this legislation that gut Medicaid weren't written by mistake or by chance. We didn't arrive at this day with a vote on this terrible budget bill by accident. Let's not delude ourselves. We are only here because a majority in this body decided to ignore the majority of the country and make a series of decisions. The Republican majority decided to gut Medicaid. They decided to take away healthcare from millions. They decided to raise insurance premiums for the rest of us. They decided that closed hospitals were a risk worth taking. They decided that taking food away from hungry kids was acceptable. They decided that trillions more in debt was not a problem. The Republican majority decided that depriving the American people of all of these things and raising their costs were worth it just as long as they paid for another tax break for billionaires. That is the bargain that this administration, along with my Republican colleagues, is forcing the American people to accept. Our people will be less healthy, and our kids will have more debt, but the President and billionaires like him will get a tax break. Of course, part of what makes this bill so frustrating is it includes some individual provisions that I have spent years trying to pass into law. This bill includes provisions I support, some even that I authored, like strengthening the R&D tax deduction to support our entrepreneurs and a tax cut for families to make childcare more affordable. I also support this bill's provisions which would tackle our housing crisis by expanding the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, which would bring down the cost of housing, as well as a provision making mortgage insurance tax deductible so that it is easier to buy a home. I support a bill with real tax cuts for the middle class and small businesses, unlike the token measures included in this bill. If my Republican colleagues worked across the aisle to draft a bill that brought this bipartisan approach to other critical areas like healthcare and food assistance, I would vote for it. Instead, my colleagues chose to take these commonsense solutions hostage by linking every good idea to three bad ones, turning this into a purely partisan endeavor. So, yes, I am glad that some of these bipartisan provisions will be signed into law, but I regret that they aren't a part of a truly bipartisan effort because of the politics of division and destruction that President Trump brings to Washington. I know that there are many areas of common ground with my Republican colleagues in this body, but it has become far too difficult to move forward on finding solutions when, at every turn, the President seems far more interested in demonizing and dividing rather than in bringing people together; in turning areas of agreement into weapons to force disagreement. Now, that is exactly the kind of cynical politics of division that does lasting damage to our families, to our economy, and to our democracy. President Trump, likely, will get this bill passed. He may get enough of the Republican caucus to stand in line once again to pass it, even though my Republican colleagues know that budget analysts have added up the financial cost of this bill and have told them that it adds trillions upon trillions to our national debt, burdening our children's futures. But, you know, as important as the debt is, it is not the only cost of passing this awful bill. There is another kind of cost, a cost not simply of dollars and cents. I shouldn't have to remind this administration and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle about the nature of this cost. They know it. Just to be clear, this tax break for corporate special interests and billionaires has a price--a price that can't be summed up in a budget line or written off during tax season--because when we debate healthcare in America, some dress up these discussions with words like ``reconciliation'' and ``program'' and ``discretionary spending,'' but what they are talking about is being sick and being healthy. What they are talking about, whether they want to admit it or not, is living and dying. So how much does this bill cost? The cost is that of millions of Americans losing their healthcare. The cost is of countless numbers of families feeling the pain of higher insurance premiums. The cost is a mother being forced to choose between paying out of pocket for her own care or paying for groceries for her kids. It is a price that is exacted in cancers that go undetected. It is exacted in chronic illnesses that go untreated. It is exacted in the healthcare challenges in our country that continue to go unaddressed because we spend all our energies simply trying to keep our heads above water in the floods of the President's own making. The pricetag is more than dollars and cents. It includes the cost of losing more people from our workforce because they are too ill to work. It includes the gnawing pains of hunger and the slow toll of malnutrition that will come as food assistance programs are robbed. It includes the anguish of young parents who no longer know how they will make ends meet. It includes the lost hopes and deferred dreams of people held back by illness. It includes the cost of having to say more early good-byes. What is the pricetag of this bill? The price, in the end, is the health and freedom of millions of Americans. It is a price that will be paid because somewhere on the road that brought us here, here in President Trump's Washington, some people decided that the health of some child or her mother may be dear but that it doesn't carry the same weight that a bigger tax return for a billionaire does. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado. Mr. BENNET. Madam President, the hour is late. I want to thank the Presiding Officer for being here. I am glad to be here with my colleague from New Hampshire and my neighbor from New Mexico. I want to thank the floor staff that is here tonight. And I would like to suggest--but it is not the purpose of my speech--that the next time Senators [[Page S3669]] make the suggestion that the floor staff should spend the entire night reading a bill here, that the Senators actually read that bill instead of imposing that on the staff that is here. I think that would be a just thing for us to do and the appropriate and proper thing for us to do. Madam President, the last time that we were headed down this road, which was when Republicans were passing President Trump's 2017 deficit- exploding tax cut, it didn't take a mathematical genius to figure out what was about to happen. I told the Senate at that time that, as our debt grows, we will spend billions more not on schools, roads, and innovation but on interest costs. Worse, we were about to blow another hole in the debt without really helping the middle class, and 8 years ago, I said: On top of that, we know that, when deficits swell, as they surely will, cuts to Medicaid and Medicare will be sure to follow, further burdening working families struggling to make ends meet. Well, here we are. That is exactly the story of this bill. Utterly predictable is this bill which massively increases our deficit when our children can least afford it. The Republican Senators who will be passing this bill tonight or tomorrow morning, if they do, know they are doing it when we have already hit a new milestone for the first time in American history. Our interest payments exceed the amount that we spend on our national defense. For the first time, the American people, because of the irresponsibility of those in this Chamber, are going to pay $1 trillion in interest. That is a massive number. That is essentially the same as what we spend on Medicare; as what we spend on children and higher education together; as what we spend on housing, bridges, broadband, ports, and highways combined. I want to be very clear tonight that over the years, Democrats and Republicans have pursued policies that have led to that $1 trillion in interest payments--there is no doubt about it--and it is worth thinking about what we could do if we hadn't made such fiscally irresponsible choices: expand the child tax credit, as my colleague from Georgia said; cut childhood poverty in half and hunger by a quarter; build a modern energy group to meet our expanding energy demands so Americans in cities and rural communities can enjoy affordable, reliable energy at home; establish a healthcare system that the American people deserve--a modern system that people in other rich, industrialized countries take for granted, a system that does not cost twice as much with worse outcomes like in the United States of America, the richest country in the world, that forces parents to choose between their children's prescriptions and school supplies and that exhausts the American people who, day after day after day, have to fight endless negotiations with their insurance companies just to keep their children covered; that constantly threatens rural hospitals and clinics with closures in this country. No other rich country in the world puts up with that craziness. And we are spending twice as much as any other country in the world to get worse healthcare, worse outcomes, and more scarcity. Every Senator on this floor might make a different choice about the policies that they would enact, their preferred policies, but I doubt that there is anybody here who is willing to go home and defend the virtues of wasting $1 trillion of the American people's money on interest payments. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and outside groups like the Penn Wharton Budget Lab tell us that by the end of the next 10 years, we will have the highest debt ratio ever, eclipsing the debt our Nation had in the 1940s. What was happening in the 1940s? That is when the ``greatest generation'' had borrowed money to defeat economic misery at home through the New Deal and European fascism by becoming the arsenal of democracy. Those were their receipts. Those were the receipts of a generation that understood its commitment to the next generation--to us. When we contemplate from this broken Senate the patriotic accomplishments of the ``greatest generation,'' what has always seemed particularly egregious to me has been the tax policy Republicans have passed four times since Ronald Reagan passed it in 1981. Every single time, they made the same promises--every time. Look it up. They made the same promises that their trickle-down tax policy would drive economic growth, cut our deficit, pay for itself. Every time, including the recent Trump tax cut in 2017, these promises have been false. They have been false. That was 8 years ago. That wasn't a century ago. We know what the math is. Everybody in this room knows the deficit is far worse today than it was when Donald Trump passed those tax cuts. President Trump has had a very rare thing happen, which is he got to take 4 years off and come back and be President. The effect of the tax cuts he passed the last time that he said were going to pay for themselves clearly have not. There is nobody in this Chamber who can deny that. I always find it amazing, when I hear these promises, why people make them if they know they are so false--over and over and over again. I think the reason is that it is a way that politicians in Washington can avoid the objections that you could never get away with at home. Imagine for a minute if there were a mayor in America, any mayor in any town--in Santa Fe, NM; or in Limon, CO; or in Los Angeles, CA--it doesn't matter--a Republican town or a Democratic town. Imagine if a mayor came to join you and said: This town is going to borrow more money than we have ever borrowed before. That would worry you. That would worry me. I think our first question to that mayor would be: OK. That worries me. What are you going to spend the money on that you are going to borrow? Are you going to spend it on schools? No. Are you going to spend it on parks? No. Are you going to spend it on the water infrastructure that so many communities in New Mexico require? Are you going to spend it on the mental health crisis that our teenagers are facing because of our failure to address it? Are you going to spend it on infrastructure? The answer to all those questions would be no. What are you going to spend the money on, Mr. Mayor? Well, the answer is, I am going to give tax cuts to the two richest neighborhoods in town and hope that those trickle down to everybody else. That is the Republican tax policy. There is a reason why no mayor in America has ever done that. There is no mayor in America who has ever pursued trickle-down economics because you would get run out on a rail. You would get run out on a rail if you went and said: We are going to borrow the most money that has ever been borrowed from our children to finance tax cuts for the richest neighborhoods in town. It makes no sense. It is preposterous. Yet that has been the argument since Ronald Reagan first said that these tax cuts will be paid for, that the economy will grow, that there won't be a deficit. There is a reason we are paying more than $1 trillion in interest today, and that is because our deficits are enormous. Fortunately--and this is really important for the American people to understand--we still live in the strongest country in the world. We are in the world's richest economy. We have the most lethal military. Apart from our President, we have a national commitment to an independent judiciary, the rule of law, and low levels of corruption in our economy and in our society. We have unparalleled capital markets, cutting-edge innovation, and world-leading universities. We have all those things going for us partly because the folks who came before us invested in those things and built those things and tended those things. But what we struggle with in our time is a sense amongst most Americans that they can't get ahead, that the American dream is further and further out of reach for themselves and for their families. In my view, that is the biggest challenge our country faces and in the face of this bill's ill-considered tax cuts and cuts to our healthcare system, which is going to throw millions of people off of their healthcare and make healthcare more expensive for everybody else. [[Page S3670]] By the way, what is the logic of that? The logic of that is that when you throw people off their healthcare, they end up going to the emergency room to take care of themselves and take care of their families, just as anybody would. That is the most expensive care that anybody could have. That expense is then put in our insurance policies, and all of us are going to pay more. You can't wish away people just because you throw them off health insurance. When other countries in the world--other wealthy, rich countries in the world--have a system of insurance that basically guarantees healthcare and mental health care to their citizens, it is worth asking why we would throw our people off the not-so-great health insurance that they have. That is a good question. But it is particularly crazy when it just drives up the cost for everybody else. We need to deeply think about the challenges that our country is facing today. It is more unequal. The top 1 percent own 30 percent of our Nation's wealth, and the bottom 50 percent own 2\1/2\ percent. The top 1 percent of Americans own 50 percent of the value of the stock market. The top 1 percent of Americans own 50 percent of the value of the stock market while the bottom 50 percent own just 1 percent of its value. Something that is really affecting my State is that the Nation's median home price is now five times higher than the median family income. As a result, the average first-time home buyer is now 38 years old--38 years old--versus 29 just a generation ago. Reading scores in our Nation have hit a 20-year low. And perhaps most damning and perhaps most upsetting is that our lifespan has declined since the 1980s. We are now, on average, likely to die 6 years sooner than other people who live in wealthy countries around the world. If you are African American, your chance of dying is, on average, 12 years--12 years-- sooner than people living in the industrialized world. If we don't shift course soon, we will be the first generation of Americans whose kids and grandkids will be worse off than we are. That has never happened before. We are on track for that to happen to our children. Many young people today can't afford to live on their own, and they may never be able to afford a house. They can't afford healthcare or childcare. They can't count on a quality education for their children in too many parts of America. Some are really worried about whether they are going to be able to afford a child at all. If you haven't heard a family say that to you in your townhalls or in your meetings, you haven't been paying attention. But instead of addressing any of these challenges, we are debating a bill tonight that will make the wealthiest Americans even wealthier and the poorest Americans even poorer--half a million of whom live in Colorado--while adding millions more to the debt, which working Americans are going to have to pay back. That is what this Republican trickle-down economics comes down to. No matter how you dress it up, that is what it comes down to. Our generation has made some very bad choices when it comes to our children's future. This bill only makes matters worse for them. And all this debt will constrain the choices they are going to be able to make for themselves. That is a shame because, unlike us, perhaps they will aspire to follow in the footsteps of the ``greatest generation'' and build a country where lifespans are growing, not falling; where economic mobility is rising; where poverty and economic anxiety are falling; where energy exports are increasing and emissions are decreasing; where quality healthcare and childcare and education and affordable housing are abundant, not scarce. It seems obvious to me that our child's ambitions should be ours as well. Unfortunately, tomorrow, the Republican majority may pass a bill that takes us further in the wrong direction. In its wake and in its wreckage, Americans who do feel an obligation to the next generation are going to have to fight even harder to fulfill our duty. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California. Mr. SCHIFF. Madam President, today, we meet at the center of a great debate, at a crossroads that will determine the direction of the country for another generation. And this debate, this choice, goes to the heart of a central question that has been plaguing families in America over the last three decades but that is now just coming to the forefront. And that question is this: If you are working hard in America, can you still earn a good living for yourself and your family? If you are working hard in America, can you still buy a home or pay your rent, buy your food and medicine, get the healthcare you need, afford fuel for your car, get a decent education, or go on a family vacation? And if the answer is no--and for all too many millions of people, the answer is no--what do we do about it? When I was a kid, my father was in the clothing business. He was a traveling salesman, and he made $18,000 a year. On the strength of that single income, my parents bought our first home for $18,000. He made $18,000 a year, and my parents bought a home for $18,000. It was the American dream, and it came true for our family. Today, I am a U.S. Senator. That, too, is part of the American dream that anything is possible in this country. But could anyone buy a home for the cost of the annual income even of a U.S. Senator? Not a chance in the world. An average home in California costs three or four times that much. My kids are paying thousands and thousands of dollars a month in rent. Could they find a home for the cost of their annual income? There is even less of a chance of that. And what about your grandkids? At the rate we are going, at the rate housing prices are rising, what chance will they have to afford a home at any income? And, of course, it is not just a home. Healthcare costs are rising even faster. Millions of families are only one healthcare crisis away from failing, and it is not their fault. It is not their fault. They are working hard--harder than ever--and they can't keep pace with rising premiums, out-of-pocket costs, hospital stays, drug costs, and charges at the emergency room. Energy prices are going up. It costs more to heat your home in the winter and a lot more to cool your home in the summer. Utility bills have been rising by double digits while incomes have remained comparatively flat. It is too much. It is too much. Now, why is this coming to a head now? Why, when we are not in a great depression, not even a great recession--although, with Trump's destructive tariff wars, we may get there soon enough--why now? Why now is this coming to a head? The answer is that people feel more squeezed than ever, more pressure than ever, more like a failure than ever because they are doing their best, working their hardest, and they are still hanging by a thread. And do you know something? It is not their fault. It is not their fault. They are doing everything they can to provide for their families, and it is just not enough. It is not their fault, but it is someone's fault. It is someone's responsibility. There is someone who should be held accountable for the fact that this generation is the first to renege on a compact between generations that we would leave the country better off to the next generation than the one that came before. And do you know who that someone is? It is us. It is us. The world has changed, the nature of work has changed, and we have not changed with it. We have not kept pace. And in too many ways, through our policy failures, we have moved the country in the wrong direction. And the question before us today is whether we continue to barrel down that track toward higher home prices, bigger healthcare costs, more hunger, and greater hardship, or whether we change direction--much too late, yes; requiring an even more profound course correction, certainly; but finally steer this country to a better quality of life for all of our citizens. Is this bill that change in direction? Does it lead our country on a new path toward affordability and prosperity? The answer--the simple, terrible but clear-as-day answer--is no, it most emphatically does not. No, it does nothing to bring down costs. No, it does nothing to make it easier for your kids or mine to buy a house, pay their rent, [[Page S3671]] buy groceries, afford their medicine, or fill up the car for a family vacation. Instead, it throws more coal in the engine barreling down a track to nowhere. Donald Trump promised he wouldn't cut Medicaid, but this bill cuts hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid. It is shredding the President's commitment made again and again. In January, the President said Republicans will ``love and cherish'' Medicaid. In February, he said, ``We are not going to touch it.'' Even a few weeks ago, the President said, ``We are not changing Medicaid. We are leaving it.'' But we see in the black and white in this text they released in the dark of night that that simply isn't true. This bill will result in millions losing their healthcare from cuts to Medicaid. We know that. The Republicans know that. Thom Tillis has made this point over and over again tonight, as have other Republicans in this body. This bill will close down hospitals in the poorest counties and States. It will raise healthcare costs for families everywhere--and by the thousands of dollars. It takes food away from the hungry. It kills clean energy so that we have to rely on oil and gas for everything, enriching that industry and impoverishing the rest of us with higher prices at the pump. It raises taxes on working families and the middle class, while lowering taxes on the very wealthy and corporations. If you are in the top 0.1 percent of income earners, making more than $5 million a year, you will get a $346,000 tax cut. How is that fair? How is that right? And it borrows the money from our kids to pay for that $346,000 tax cut, to pay for the habits of really rich people. Where is the fairness, the morality in that? When is enough enough? My father was part of the ``greatest generation.'' We, it would appear, are part of the most selfish, and I am fed up with it. I am fed up with it. What happened to any sense of responsibility in this generation? What happened to love of country? Can we love our country and impoverish it? Can we love our children and grandchildren if we take from them only to give to ourselves? In this bill, we borrow trillions from our kids, and for what? So the rich can have a bigger boat? So corporate CEOs can have more money? So a company can buy back more of its stock? So we can be richer than our neighbor while his neighbor has no home at all? ``The test of our progress,'' Franklin Roosevelt said in 1937, ``is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.'' Last week, a landscaper in Los Angeles was tackled to the ground because he was undocumented. He is the father of three marines--three marines. When one of those marines was finally able to speak to his father after his detention, he had one ask of his son: Please go back to the worksite and finish the job. That was his ask. That is the work ethic that has made this country great, not the ethic that brought him to the ground. Raising three marines, that is the patriotism that has made this country great, not the rancor that beat him while he lay there. But if this bill is not the answer--and it most certainly is not--if this bill only makes matters worse, far worse, then what is the answer? What direction shall we go? How can we begin to make the country work for people once again? Well, we can give instead of take. We can build instead of tear down. We can recapture once again the sense of possibility in this country. If Eisenhower was part of the generation that won the war and built the roads and highways, let us be the generation that wins the peace by creating the next giant boom in housing in America, making the investment necessary, tapping into the great potential of the government and industry working together, breaking down each obstacle in the way--millions and millions of new homes that my children can afford and your children. Let us build new hospitals instead of closing them down and, in so doing, bring the cost of healthcare down with them. Let us train new doctors and nurses so it is not so expensive to visit them and new home healthcare workers to take care of us even as we take care of them. Let us grow more food and feed more people at home and abroad and bring down the costs of our groceries. Let us thank our farmworkers, instead of chasing them through the fields to separate them from those they love. None of this--none of this--is beyond our capacity. It may mean that we can't afford yet another tax break for the wealthy or a giveaway to the oil industry or a giveaway to any other industry and its corporate titans. It may call for some sacrifice on our part, but a fraction of what our parents and grandparents gave to this country. It means that we pay more attention to our kids and their needs and less our own; that we once again show concern and compassion for our neighbor and remember that we were once strangers in a strange land; that we show humility about our own achievements and recognize that none of us got here on our own; that all of us can prosper without someone else being made to suffer--you know, the way it used to be; the way it could be once again. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. LUJAN. Madam President, I heard several of my colleagues speak tonight about what this bill means for Americans all across America. Now, each of us has a responsibility to ask whether this bill meets the needs of the people that we are honored to serve. Now, I grew up on a small farm, as many of you know, working the land, caring for animals, sometimes even cleaning barns. And I can tell you, this bill does not pass the smell test. For New Mexicans, hard-working people, this bill does not help our families get ahead. New Mexicans work hard. Folks are not looking for a handout. New Mexicans are the type of people who would give you the shirt off their back if you needed it. It is just who we are, and I am proud of it. But sometimes people fall on hard times. And I will remind you all that this could happen to any of us. You might need medical care. You might need help putting food on the table, maybe support to care for a loved one, or just want enough security to know that a job will be there for us. Some claim that this bill will help Americans, which we know is not the truth because, from where I stand, there is very little in this legislation that helps hard-working New Mexicans. Now, it is important that this debate is happening because now New Mexicans and people all across America can clearly see what is in this bill and what is not. As has been said time and time again this evening, the vast majority of this legislation benefits the ultrawealthy. The wealthiest 0.1 percent are getting over 250 grand back in their pocket. Can you believe this? How many people might not make that in a lifetime? An extra $250,000 in their pockets, that is what this bill is about. Now, meanwhile, it does not help farmers; it does not support teachers or children. Nothing for New Mexico seniors who rely on Medicaid SNAP, and nothing for New Mexicans who served our country and deserve our care in return. New Mexicans are hard-working people who believe in the values of loving your neighbor, following what the Bible teaches us: Do unto others as you have them do unto you. This bill goes against everything New Mexicans stand for. It is not honest; it is not caring; and it is not fair. Now, I have heard my colleagues try to claim that this bill does not cut assistance. That is a lie. It is not true. This bill cuts more than a trillion dollars from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid, for crying out loud. Senate Republicans are gutting the Affordable Care Act and ripping healthcare away from 17 million Americans. Now a few of my colleagues across the aisle have spoken with some clarity, saying out loud what we all know to be true. One Republican Senator warned about SNAP, about these cuts, saying: If we don't watch out, people are going to get hurt. Another Republican colleague said on Medicaid: We can't be cutting healthcare for working people and for poor people in order to constantly give special tax treatment to corporations. [[Page S3672]] Now that same Senator went on to say that: Slashing health insurance for the working poor is morally wrong. That is right. I wish more of them spoke with that clarity. At least a few of them are saying out loud what the rest of America is thinking. Now is the time for more courage, though, the courage to put people first. My colleagues all have a chance to vote against this legislation. They all have a chance to vote for amendments that will say: Hands off Medicaid. Don't cut those nutrition programs that one Senator said are going to hurt people if we don't watch out. This bill takes food from the mouths of New Mexican children and takes care away from New Mexicans who are sick. It is not just New Mexico. These cuts will hurt people in every State. My Republican colleagues, to lock up one more vote, offered something called the Polar Payoff--a carve-out for one State. Now, look, these carve-outs are an admission that this bill will leave people hungry and without care--plain and simple. Otherwise, why would they want a carve- out for their State? Why was this carve-out added? Because this scam of a bill cuts funding for rural hospitals and the programs that feed children and families in need. For our rural communities out there, for the farmers and ranchers who grow our food, this bill will hurt your bottom line while closing rural hospitals, closing rural grocery stores. For families who rely on SNAP, this bill means less food on the table and more children going to bed hungry, all while making healthcare, especially emergency care, harder to access. That is what this bill does to hard-working Americans. And I am not even mentioning the Americans who currently have healthcare but will no longer be able to afford it because of this bill. Those of you watching at home tonight who do not think this impacts you, it just might. Earlier this week, I had the honor of speaking with a healthcare worker from Las Cruces, Julee. Julee traveled all the way from New Mexico to Washington, DC, to tell Congress not to mess with her families' Medicaid. Like many of her colleagues, she had a story to share. Now, Julee's son received mental health care through Medicaid. When that coverage was cut, Julee lost her son. Soon after, her daughter was diagnosed with a serious condition that required immediate care. Now, without Medicaid, her daughter may not have survived either. Just think about that. Let it sink in. New Mexicans understand the responsibility of looking after family. Like so many families in New Mexico and across the country, I grew up helping to take care of my grandparents. Grandma Nestora and Grandpa Celedon, my dad's parents. Now, when my other grandparents Grandpa Luis and Grandma Cleotilde were victims of a terrible car accident, I watched my mom, my uncles, my aunts, and my cousins show what grace looks like, what love feels like, what compassion really means. Now this bill is a direct attack on those values, values of helping one another and shared sacrifice. There is no shared sacrifice in this bill, only more handouts for the wealthy. There is nothing in this bill that shows that we are all looking out for our neighbors across America. And like so many Americans, I am so deeply concerned about the pricetag. This bill would add more than $3 trillion to the national debt. To people watching, this is not just a number. It affects your everyday life--higher interest rates. Think about your credit cards, your car loans, your mortgages if you are fortunate to have one. This bill is going to make your life more expensive. It is a total betrayal of our constituents. So to the American people: Hear me when I say, keep speaking. You have done it before. The American people--all of you that spoke up--you helped stop the sale of our public lands. You made your voices impossible to ignore. Now, this bill is not the law of the land yet. But if we stay silent, it will be. So keep organizing, keep calling, and keep showing up because part of our responsibility as American citizens is to protect one another, to stand by one another, to treat others the way that we want to be treated, the Golden Rule. It is not hard. We all have a responsibility to stand up when something this dangerous threatens our neighbors, our values, and our future. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The Senator from New Jersey. Mr. KIM. Mr. President, I rise today to lift up the fact that this reconciliation bill will do real harm to countless American families. It is not theoretical or hypothetical. Families are hurting right now: the opioid crisis that has ravaged large parts of my State, the mental health crisis that people across this country are so concerned about and are begging for help about, and so many other challenges that every single family knows the fear of a health crisis. Like Susan, a mother I met at a townhall down in Egg Harbor--a townhall that was part of a series of townhalls that I did trying to highlight the challenges that so many families are facing--and in this crowded room full of hundreds of people, a woman named Susan shared her story, a mom of a 24-year-old son with Down syndrome. They use Medicaid to be able to cover his care. She broke down at the weight of her fear and worry for her child, something a lot of us can relate to. She said to me that this is the face of Medicaid. As I went over to give her a hug, I remember she said: ``It's real.'' And it is real, and I know everyone in here knows that. I know because offices on both sides of the aisle are getting the same calls. Our phone systems broke down because of the overwhelming volume of people calling and literally begging--begging--us not to do this, begging us to protect Medicaid so their kids can see the doctors, begging us not to cut SNAP benefits so their students could have access to healthy food. It is a humbling experience seeing a parent begging for the resources to take care of their sick child. Yet, as I look around, I see far too many people rushing through this process to get it done with little care about the resulting impact it will have, generational damage that will be done. While we are rushing through, barreling through without the ability to properly debate this, I want you to know the people of New Jersey, the people of this country, this budget represents an abandonment by their government, and this will hurt everyone we are supposed to be helping. Some of the people that could be impacted the most are people within the disability community, hundreds of thousands of people in New Jersey with disabilities that rely on Medicaid for coverage, over 15 million across our country, including a man named Tom Spadaro, a disability advocate in Ocean County, NJ, who joined me for a townhall. After a gun accident when he was 11, Tom is a total quadriplegic, dependent on a ventilator and others. Medicaid helped him go to school, then college, and in his own words has given him dignity. When talking about this bill that we are debating here today he said: If I lose Medicaid, I feel like I'm getting shot in the head again. This time, it's not a bullet. It's legislation. I want his words to echo through this Chamber today for everyone to hear. If this budget passes, families in every single State across this country will feel these cuts long after the media and the Trump administration have decided it is time to move on and ``get over it.'' A cancer patient doesn't just ``move on'' when they have to delay treatment because they have lost insurance coverage, when a family has to upend their lives to become caregivers to their parents because they can't afford elder care, when a hospital closes and the new closest emergency room is hours away after the child is in an accident and needs help now, not in 5 hours, they won't ``get over it.'' America will feel this long after Donald Trump is no longer in the White House, and they will remember what has happened to their lives because of it. Now there are some people listening who might not think that this is going to affect them, but these cuts to healthcare in this bill are so dramatic, it is going to have an impact that reverberates all throughout our communities. [[Page S3673]] I talked to a hospital leader in New Jersey who said that these cuts could be so devastating for their revenue because of how much they get through Medicaid reimbursements, that they are not sure that they are going to be able keep their doors open, a hospital not certain if they can keep their doors open. This is not the only story like this across my State, across the country, whether it is rural hospitals or it is suburban or urban. We are going to have a lot of challenges that are going to reverberate beyond just those on Medicaid. It is going to affect every single one of us and raise prices at the same time. Losing that critical care in communities not only abandons people in their time of most need, but it leaves a tragic ripple effect on others and other hospitals. So today I am putting forward an amendment to this bill that would stop this from happening and directly take out the parts of this bill that would force hospital closures and reduce access to affordable healthcare for so many across this country. In no reality should we be helping billionaires send their rockets to outer space while turning people away at hospitals. And yet, this is the reality we find ourselves in, deciding how much care is acceptable to take away from families across New Jersey to fit a budget cut or how many patients can be turned away from lifesaving medication just so the wealthy can have a nice tax break. A doctor from Frenchtown shared some profound words with my office. She said: Medicaid is a reflection of our values. It is how we show up for each other when life gets hard. Well what does it say about our Nation as we are having this debate that could very well take a trillion dollars out of Medicaid; about those who need the care the most as if they are just expendable, as if they are just some remainder on the equation of capitalism that is just pushed to the wayside? As just an inevitability, as a shrug of the shoulder of our society to say: I am sorry what happened to you, without a care and an extended arm and a hand to reach out and pull them up. Let's be very clear. This bill will cause prices to drive up. In New Jersey alone, over 454,000 families will see higher costs in premiums, according to the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance, which is why I am introducing an amendment to make sure this bill wouldn't raise these costs by striking provisions that would increase premiums or out-of-pocket costs under Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and some private insurance marketplaces too. We cannot allow billionaires to get richer while working families are seeing drastic increases to their premiums or out-of-pocket costs, costs to keep their children healthy as we deal with the worst measles epidemic in decades, costs to afford their kids medicine while we see our government attacking science and fact, making parents have to work that much harder to keep their children safe. With all the challenges we are dealing with right now, it is painful to think through what will happen if this bill goes into effect and the fact that these healthcare cuts will increase our gaps and worsen conditions for our vulnerable communities, including children. If we can't stand up for them, for our children, who are we willing to stand up for? And as I said at the beginning, every family has a healthcare story. Everyone has felt overwhelmed in the face of sickness and injury. Just a year ago, my father took a fall. I got the call while I was on the campaign trail. I rushed down to the hospital. But even after the surgery, what we learned is there was an even more debilitating challenge that we faced, a cognitive decline as my father is descending into dementia. I just spent Father's Day weekend with my father, the entire weekend, but it was in the emergency room as he had twice fallen in 2 days--two separate trips to the emergency room. My family is overwhelmed right now. We struggle to think through his needs that go far beyond what we can be able to provide, goes far beyond what Medicare can provide. And it is not just my father and my family. We have failed seniors. We have failed as we have failed to plan and create a place for elder care in this country that preserves a foundation of dignity and decency for everybody. And when you are in the trenches fighting for your own life or gripping the hand of a loved one struggling, the last thing you want to think about is worrying if you are eligible for this treatment or that. You want to be able to provide what it takes for your loved one to survive, to go a little further, spend a little more time on this planet with us, and to grow our love deeper. When we think about that and then we ask ourselves, well, why is this bill happening, why are these cuts happening, it is not to bring down the deficit. Instead, it is going to balloon the deficit by trillions of dollars. Who among us in this country think that the problems that we face as a Nation is because the wealthiest among us don't have enough? The distrust in government right now, it is not because politics isn't doing enough to help the most well-off in our country, the billionaires and the millionaires. I ask my colleagues to find the courage to do the right thing. I want to bring us back to 2017 in this very Chamber as Senators gathered to decide the fate of the Affordable Care Act, which was, at the time, hanging by a thread. Many of my colleagues here in this Chamber were also on the floor at that time. I was not. I was a regular citizen, angry at what I was seeing unfolding, watching it on my phone. A citizen that felt so detached from what was happening in this Chamber, I remember thinking to myself, How could the Senate be seriously considering doing such harm to this country, to so many Americans by trying to gut preexisting condition protections, the Affordable Care Act, so much others? I asked myself: Am I missing something? Am I missing information to understand why it is that this is even happening? And we saw rushed conversations, and we saw people running back and forth. And we also saw Senator John McCain step up and signal with his arm that he did not stand for this. Senator McCain's vote was a rare moment of doing what you know is right even when you are surrounded by noise telling you it is wrong. It is surreal now finding myself on the floor of the Senate in a similar moment in our own Nation's history with so much on the line with this vote, and I look around this Chamber and yet again think the exact same questions from 8 years ago, How can the Senate seriously be considering gutting care for so many? And now with the benefit of being here, the conversations and the information, I am still left with this question of, Am I missing something? How is it that such an esteemed body that is meant to protect the American people, in this Chamber where so many decisions have been made to protect the American people, that we are on the cusp of doing something that will do generational damage to so many American families? This vote before us seems as surreal and reckless from within this Chamber as it does from outside. But while the problem is the same, so is the solution. It is about courage--the courage John McCain had; the courage that so many of my constituents have. So many people have called and shared their personal stories--stories about their families' health they probably had never told anybody, but they feel so desperate right now to do something that they are willing to open themselves up, be able to pull back the curtain of the dangers and the pain that they have endured, to be able to try to do anything to stop this bill from hurting Americans. That is courage. And it is courage about standing up against the big money and the special interest, and sometimes it feels insurmountable. And I say to my colleagues here today that you won't be remembered by whether or not you passed this bill on President Trump's timeline or if you feigned concern about constituents just to be able to stab them in the back later. You will be remembered by your courage to stand up and say no. You will be remembered by your courage to speak out for the people--not just a few who have paid, but for all of us. [[Page S3674]] You will be remembered in the same way as our former colleague was remembered by what he did 8 years ago. I urge you to remember that this job is bigger than all of us--bigger than any one man, any one party. It is about using our vote and our courage to make lives better for those that we represent. History and the American people are watching. You still have time. We still have power. I still believe in this Chamber and believe it can be a force for good. Let us use it for the children, for the disabled, for those not in this room. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California. Mr. PADILLA. Mr. President, I too rise in opposition to the reconciliation bill before us, but before I get to my objections over the substance of this historic attack on working and middle-class families, I want to speak for a minute as the ranking member of the Rules Committee, and I need to address how Republicans are abusing the process to get here. They are breaking the Senate rules to hide the true cost of the bill. For the second time in just 6 weeks, the Republican majority is going nuclear on the Senate rules. And they are doing it with the same purpose: to avoid the 60-vote threshold of the filibuster in order to pass a very unpopular agenda. Now, I know oftentimes, we are advised against getting into ``process'' because most people may not care about process or understand process. But in this particular case, it serves to underscore the significance of the damage that this bill represents, the procedural lengths to which the Republican majority is going to try to get this done. And I do have to say it is a little surprising, because it was just in May that Leader Thune said--Leader Thune unequivocally said: While Republicans are in charge, the legislative filibuster will remain in place. If you go back to January, he was asked about this because folks kind of had a sense that this might be coming. He said then about overruling the Senate Parliamentarian: That is totally akin to killing the filibuster. We can't go there. People need to understand that. But now Republicans are trying to do exactly that, to hide behind the technical language of Senate procedure to harm working families. And like I said, it is not the first time. Just last month, Republicans voted to override the very plain language of the Congressional Review Act, and they voted to overrule the Parliamentarian to repeal California's Clean Air Act standards with a simple majority vote. Fast forward to today, they are running the same play, this time with trillion-dollar consequences, not just air quality and public health consequences. See, colleagues and folks watching at home, budget reconciliation is the most powerful, expedited procedure statute on the books. You can do a lot with a simple majority and avoid the filibuster, but you have to do it by the rules of reconciliation. But today, the Republican majority wants to extend trillions of dollars of tax cuts for President Trump's billionaire friends and extend those tax cuts permanently. That is not just terrible, terrible policy, it is against the Senate rules. The Congressional Budget Act says clearly that reconciliation bills cannot increase the debt beyond 10 years. Now, it doesn't take a Nobel Prize-winning economist to know that a permanent trillion-dollar tax cut would do exactly that. And so once again, following the same playbook they did last month, the majority is going to twist the rules to try to find a way. They are, again, ignoring the guidance from the Parliamentarian's office that doesn't fit their agenda. And they are setting yet another new precedent for this body not only to continue to overrule the Parliamentarian, but to ignore adding trillions of dollars of costs under the ``current policy baseline.'' As we did during the Clean Air Act debate last month, I and my Democratic colleagues will once again remind our Republican colleagues that sooner or later, Democrats will be back in the majority. By then, the American people will have felt the pain of this bill, but we will make sure that they understand just how hard you tried to work to hide it from them. Democrats will not let the American people forget what Senate Republicans do this week. Now, on to the substance of budget reconciliation. How many times have we heard the Trump administration these past few months say they are focused on fraud? Waste? Abuse? Now, these are the buzz words that they turn to when trying to bat away questions or when Americans are trying to get clarity on whether the lifesaving services that they depend on are about to get cut. But in reality, what we are seeing happen this week is one of the biggest acts of fraud in American history playing out right before our very eyes with the bill under debate today. And it is past midnight, so we are in Monday, so I can still say today. Donald Trump and his billionaire allies are literally stealing--stealing--from working families in order to reduce the amount of taxes they would have to pay, literally robbing from the poor to give to the rich. For anyone really wondering whether they would actually do that, we know they will because they have done it before. In 2017, during the first Trump Presidency, Republicans seemed fine saying they could afford hundreds of billions of dollars in permanent tax cuts for large corporations. I remember the arguments back then. ``This is going to grow the economy,'' they said. ``In time, it will reduce the debt,'' they said. That didn't happen. So today, now, they are arguing that we can't afford programs that keep kids from going hungry? We can't afford the programs that keep lights on in emergency rooms? It is outrageous. In 2025, so many working families are struggling--struggling to keep up with the rising costs from Trump's chaotic tariff wars, with prices going up for groceries and other everyday goods. Many are working long hours and still struggling to make ends meet or to afford care for their loved ones. I get it. I have been there. Colleagues, as I have shared with you before, I am the proud son of working-class parents who came to the United States from Mexico in the 1960s. I will remind you that for 40 years, my father worked as a short-order cook and my mom cleaned houses. On those modest salaries, they raised my sister, my brother, and I in the proud working-class community of Pacoima, CA. And I remember what it was like to live paycheck to paycheck. I know how unnerving it can be, for example, when the car broke down, and you listened and witnessed your parents' debate because, on the one hand, maybe they couldn't afford the cost of repairing the car right away, but they also realized that they couldn't afford to not fix the car because they had to get to work. I know that there are so many Americans in communities like the one I grew up in that aren't looking for handouts. That is not what we are arguing or debating in this bill. Americans just want a fair chance to work hard and provide for their families. There is pride and dignity in working hard and providing for families. That is part of the American dream. People just want a fair playing field. In a country with as much promise and profit as the United States of America, that shouldn't be too much to ask for. But not only would the Republican budget reconciliation bill be one big handout for the wealthiest Americans, it would actually make life harder for working families in order to pay for it. That is wrong, and it is cruel. At its very core, just like Trump did in 2017 with the help of Republicans in Congress, this bill is fundamentally about one thing and one thing only: cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans and big corporations. How else do you explain the fact that the top 0.1 percent will see a tax cut of more than $250,000 a year, while millions of American households will actually see a reduction in their annual income or take-home pay? That is because to pay for the massive handouts to the wealthy, Republicans are gutting healthcare and cutting services that so many working families depend on, and they are twisting themselves into knots in order to cut around $1 trillion in healthcare--cuts that would leave 16 million Americans without health insurance. We are talking about seniors. [[Page S3675]] We are talking about children, Americans with disabilities, hard- working families who don't deserve to be kicked off their health insurance just so billionaires can pay less in taxes. These devastating cuts, by the way, will also close rural hospitals around the country, including in California, where so many are already struggling just to keep the doors open. And for folks listening to the debate thinking that ``well, if I am not on Medicaid, then this may not apply to me; this isn't going to hurt me,'' let me remind you that if your local hospital that relies on Medicaid dollars is forced to cut services or cut staff or even close its doors as a result, then, yes, you, too, will be hurt. But the bill doesn't stop there. In this bill, Republicans cut SNAP, nutrition assistance, that critical lifeline that so many count on to literally feed their families. How much more cruel can you get? But wait, there is more. Republicans are also rolling back the historic progress we have made investing in our transition to a clean energy economy, targeting the millions of clean energy jobs that are fueling innovation and helping us stay ahead of China. The cuts to clean energy that Republicans are making in this bill will lead to higher energy costs, higher electricity bills for so many families. I am reminded that this last November, so many voters went to the polls and voted, hoping for lower prices. They were desperate and looking for relief, and that is what motivated their votes. But this bill does the opposite. So I have to wonder, for my Republican colleagues who are supporting this measure, who was it that you are fighting for? Did any of you really come to Congress to take food away from the hungry? to take care away from sick children? What are you proposing be done here? Now, I have seen Republicans go back and forth on this bill for months now, I am sure trying to decide just how much they can try to get away with, and I have heard some of the arguments that they plan to make to justify voting for this bill. Some of them will argue that we need this bill because we need to reduce the deficit. Talk about misleading. This bill adds trillions--yes, trillions--of dollars to our Nation's debt. So even when they try to twist the numbers and come up with the funny math, it doesn't even result in deficit reduction. And do you know how you can tell? Because the Republicans included a $5 trillion increase to the debt limit in this bill. If the bill and the cuts included in the bill indeed reduced the deficit, as they claim it does, they wouldn't have needed to raise the debt limit in the process. So let's be clear. Republicans who are voting for this bill know full well it will hurt so many of their constituents. That is why behind closed doors you have Republicans handing out flyers that show just how devastating Medicaid cuts will be in States represented by Republicans. Or we hear them discussing the burden SNAP cuts will have on State and local governments. But because the leader of their party wants to sign this bill to celebrate the Fourth of July this year, many of them will vote yes. But I will ask again: Who is this bill in service of? Who are you standing up for? Who are you fighting for? I will tell you who I am fighting for. I am fighting for people like Jesus Acosta from San Diego, a home care provider who in 2016 became his mother's full-time care provider when she was tragically hit by a car and became disabled. Jesus can't hold a full-time job and carry all the responsibilities of looking after his mother, so for both Jesus and his mother, Medicaid has been a lifeline. I am fighting for him. I am fighting for people like Tina Ewing-Wilson in the Inland Empire, who remembers what it was like the last time her Medicaid benefits were cut. Tina struggles with seizures and developmental disabilities and requires care 24/7. But when the great recession hit and Medicaid cuts followed, Tina knew she could only afford her care by offering free room and board to caregivers--caregivers who went out to abuse drugs and alcohol and took advantage of her financially. Tina is terrified of that possibly happening again if these Republican cuts to Medicaid impact her. I am fighting for her. I am fighting for the families I met at Rady Children's Hospital, where over half of all patients are covered by Medicaid. I am fighting for the nurses and the caregivers who fear for their patients. They care for their patients, but they are fearing for their patients because of these proposals. I am fighting for every parent across the country who is working their tail off to put food on the table for their children but every now and then may need a helping hand. If you see these Americans, if you have constituents with similar experiences in Your States and still think they should have less of our help, not more, then I guess we came to Congress for different reasons. If you have seen so many corporations' profits soaring and the wealth inequality in our country growing and think that billionaires need more tax relief, then I guess we came to Congress for different reasons. If, this week, you will vote to rip these critical lifelines away from millions of Americans because you somehow think it is the right political calculation, then surely we came to Congress for different reasons. Colleagues, it is crystal clear. I urge you to vote no on this bill and stand with me, stand with us, stand up for working families. That is what I plan to do. I yield the floor. ____________________ |