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Floor Speech

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Ms. ROSEN. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on an issue that will affect millions of hard-working families, seniors, children, veterans, and any American who relies on essential services.

As we will soon see, Republicans are going to use the budget reconciliation process--a tool that was originally designed to help rein in wasteful spending and lower the national debt--to pass massive new tax cuts for billionaires and the ultrawealthy. To pay for these tax breaks, they are proposing devastating cuts to vital programs that people in my State of Nevada rely on, including Medicaid, SNAP, supplemental programs for women, infants and children.

Let me say that again. Congressional Republicans are going to cut critical government programs like Medicaid and SNAP in order to give the wealthiest Americans even more tax cuts. You got that right.

Their policies are, well, billionaires win and families lose. This isn't fiscal responsibility; it is moral negligence. This isn't just about economic policy; this is about the livelihoods of everyday Americans.

At a time when Nevadans are already grappling with economic hardship and the rising cost of living, these actions by my Republican colleagues are just plain wrong. They are just out of step. Instead of using this budget process to provide relief for hard-working families, Republicans are exploiting it to push through policies that benefit billionaires like Elon Musk while leaving millions of Americans--I will say everyday, hard-working families, regular people, everyday people-- leaving them all behind, leaving you in the lurch. Again, their motto seems to be ``billionaires win, families lose.''

Let's remember what Senate Democrats did with the budget process when we were in the majority. Anybody remember? Well, we gave Medicare the power to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices. We capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month. We helped hard-working Americans who are being crushed by high costs. We stood up to corporate interests on behalf of the middle class. Now my Republican colleagues are in the majority. What do they want to do? Well, again, billionaires win, families lose. They want to give additional billions in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans while the rest of us are footing the damn bill.

The numbers tell the story. Extending these tax cuts would give the top 1 percent of earners--those making roughly $750,000 a year or more--a tax cut averaging more than $60,000 a year. I am going to put that in perspective for a moment. The tax cut that the top 1 percent would get is more than the total income of most families who rely on Medicare or SNAP or just most families in general. It is the top 1 percent.

The two programs Republicans are planning to cut, Medicare and SNAP, they are going to cut them in order to pay the tax cuts--trillions of dollars--for who? Elon Musk and their billionaire buddies. So you heard that right. These expanded tax cuts will cost the Federal Government $4.2 trillion.

You might be asking yourself, wait, so how are Republicans going to pay for all of this? In order to help offset some of that cost, they are going to decrease funding for Medicaid, SNAP, and other services that support people with disabilities and elderly individuals.

Medicaid alone provides health coverage to almost 80 million Americans, including children, seniors, and people with disabilities, like I said. And these cuts would directly harm some of the most vulnerable people in our society, making it harder and harder for them to get the kind of lifesaving care or just any care that they may need.

In my State of Nevada, more than 800,000 people rely on Medicaid for their healthcare--800,000. Any reduction in its funding would leave these individuals--some of them our friends, our neighbors; they go to church with us--a reduction in funding is going to leave these individuals without access to affordable healthcare or the ability to see a doctor.

Similarly, SNAP is a lifeline for millions of families seeking to feed their children--just feed their children. It feeds our seniors. It helps our working parents. It is estimated that more than 40 million people rely on SNAP just to put food on the table. Nearly one in six people in Nevada benefited from SNAP last year, the majority of whom are children. You have that right--one in six people benefited from SNAP in Nevada. The majority of them are children.

So we are talking about parents who rely on this program to make sure that their kids don't go to bed hungry or that they have breakfast before they go to school. They are feeding hungry kids. But Republicans are proposing cuts to SNAP that would affect millions of families, driving up food insecurity, placing an additional burden on those who can least afford it.

On top of these cuts, you have to consider the cuts that the Trump administration has already made, actions that are hurting veterans' services, healthcare, and good-paying jobs rebuilding our infrastructure.

The Trump administration has already made cuts to the staff of the Department of Veterans Affairs, including the people that staff the Veterans assistance hotline. These cuts are going to have a severe impact on our veterans. They served our country with honor. They deserve the best possible care when they return home. Cutting doctors and nurses and counselors and people who answer the help line--how is that helping those who protected us, who keep our homeland safe? We owe them that. Well, these cuts aren't showing that at all.

The administration has already targeted Medicare for staffing cuts that could undermine healthcare access for seniors across the country. Nearly one in five seniors depends on Medicare for their healthcare needs, and for many, it is their only source of care. Letting go of Medicare employees will impact seniors' ability to access this literal lifeline.

We have also seen attacks from the Trump administration on job- creating infrastructure projects like those authorized in the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act. These projects--well, what I want to tell you is that they support good- paying, American jobs--good-paying jobs in construction and engineering and public works. They fix our roads and our bridges and our trains, our grid. It matters. They build the rail systems that help connect our communities. These are American jobs on American roads, on American rail, on American bridges. We should be keeping these jobs and investing in our infrastructure. These are the folks who help modernize our airports. I can tell you, in my State of Nevada, they support our travel and tourism jobs--a top industry for us.

These jobs modernizing our airports and our infrastructure help everyone across this country, every American--American jobs in America for Americans.

We should be investing in our infrastructure, but the cuts made by the Trump administration mean that projects all over the country are in limbo. Even delayed projects are going to cost jobs and make it harder to rebuild our Nation's infrastructure.

In Nevada, we know how important infrastructure investments are to keeping our economy moving and our communities safe. We are talking about jeopardizing projects to build new solar energy installations and even expanding access to high-speed internet. For us, that is nearly half a billion dollars' worth of Federal funding that has been allocated for Nevada to connect rural communities across our State to just reliable internet.

The loss of funding for projects like this one just doesn't stop at people accessing the internet; it will hurt people who are counting on the jobs a project would create, particularly in our rural communities.

The numbers here are staggering, and the impact is undeniable. We are talking about cuts that have the potential to impact millions of people--people who are working hard every day to make ends meet, to provide for their families, and to ensure they can live with dignity.

These existing cuts, coupled with the Republicans' proposed budget cuts, are just going to be devastating for American families, and the fact that these cuts are being made to give billionaires even more tax breaks--well, it is unconscionable.

The American people deserve better. They deserve a government that works for them, that works for our families, not for the ultrawealthy.

At the end of the day, Republicans have to decide who they are fighting for because right now, with this budget proposal, they are fighting for billionaires and the largest corporations that have already benefited from their 2017 tax cuts.

We cannot and we must not turn our backs on the American people. We cannot allow billionaires to get richer on the backs of everyday Americans. We cannot let the motto be for this administration ``billionaires win and families lose'' because families are the backbone of America--families are the backbone of America--and they deserve respect and attention, and we cannot allow the billionaires to break their backs.

So I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come together and put the American people first--people over billionaires. Let's work together to strengthen our economy, protect our vital programs, and ensure that everyone, regardless of their wealth or status, has an equal opportunity to succeed.

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