Budget Reconciliation

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. HASSAN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Vermont for his eloquent words just now, for his passion for his constituents and for all Americans and his understanding of the importance of healthcare to the people we all represent.

I rise to join my colleagues in opposing the attempts by the President and congressional Republicans to pay for more tax breaks for billionaires by ending Medicaid as we know it, cutting healthcare for children, seniors in nursing homes, adults with developmental disabilities, and hard-working families.

At a time when American families are struggling to keep up with high costs, I can imagine few ideas more ill-advised, more counterproductive, more outrageous, and more devastating than to make lifesaving healthcare unaffordable for millions of our fellow Americans.

Millions of people depend on Medicaid every day. For families who are struggling to make ends meet, Medicaid gives them the ability to get care, whether that means routine checkups, preventive care, or treatment for serious illnesses or disease.

Medicaid also provides long-term care to many seniors and to people with disabilities, including children with autism, Down syndrome, or cerebral palsy. They all depend on Medicaid for medical care and support services.

Congress created and expanded and strengthened Medicaid for two main reasons--first, because we understood that in a country as great as ours, we can't turn our backs on our neighbors. There is nothing American about leaving seniors or families with children with disabilities to fend for themselves. A great country treats its people with great dignity.

But we also passed Medicaid because we know that it is in all of our economic interests to have more healthy people. When more people are healthy and able to work, they can get ahead and stay ahead, provide a better life for their family, join the workforce, contribute their talents, and in so doing, make our economy stronger.

Our country is not better off or made more prosperous when more of our fellow citizens fall ill to preventable diseases or are held back by chronic illnesses or when people with disabilities can't get the support they need to get jobs or participate in our communities.

But even as families try to keep up with high costs, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans decided that now is the time to raise healthcare costs and make healthcare more unaffordable for tens of millions of Americans. The proposed Republican budget will require major cuts to Medicaid, slashing hundreds of billions of dollars from this critical health program simply to pay for more tax breaks for billionaires.

Now, some of my colleagues defending the President may point out that during an interview last night, the President insisted that he had no plans to cut Medicaid. However, as the Sun rose this morning, the President came out in full support of the Republican budget proposal--a budget that would eviscerate Medicaid. Look, if the President doesn't want to cut Medicaid, then he shouldn't endorse a budget that ends Medicaid as we know it.

Let's take a moment and discuss what slashing Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars will actually do because we can't forget that in the Senate, when we are debating dollars, we are really talking about people. We are talking about our constituents.

We are talking about Michelle, a Granite Stater from Manchester who was diagnosed with a rare cancer and was only able to get treatment and get healthy enough so she could go back to work because of Medicaid.

We are talking about Jim, a Granite Stater who was born with cerebral palsy but was able to go to college, get a job, get married, and raise a daughter because he got the care and support he needed--yes, through Medicaid.

We are talking about Ashley, a Granite Stater who struggled with addiction to opioids and lost her husband to an overdose. Ashley was able to get her life back on track and now works to help others recover from addiction just like she did because of treatments she received through Medicaid.

These are just a few of the people that my office has heard from who benefit from Medicaid. And it is not just them. In New Hampshire, there are 180,000 people on Medicaid--that is over 10 percent of our State's population--including more than 90,000 children, more than 1,500 pregnant women, more than 15,000 people with disabilities, nearly 10,000 seniors, nearly 10,000 Granite Staters who are struggling with addiction who depend on Medicaid for medication-assisted treatment, the gold standard of addiction care. So make no mistake, when the President and his allies in Congress talk about decimating Medicaid, these are the people whose lives they are playing with.

So before the President and some of my colleagues proceed, the American people deserve some answers. Would our country be better off if any of the people whose experiences I discussed didn't receive care? Would our country be better off if we left people like Michelle, Christine, Jim, and Ashley to fend for themselves? Is America--our economy, our workforce--better off with more people sick?

Who do these cuts serve? The millions of Americans who would lose their care--what wrong did they commit? What did they do to deserve losing their healthcare? If the President and his allies in Congress end Medicaid as we know it, I don't know what any of the millions of people on Medicaid, the Granite Staters I have heard from--I don't know what they are going to do, and to be blunt, neither does the President or my Republican colleagues. But they are apparently all in on taking away Medicaid without any plan to help my constituents or theirs preserve access to high-quality healthcare and the peace of mind that comes with it.

Of course, what is remarkable about the President's attempt to gut Medicaid is how painfully out of step he is with the country. And I think he knows it. The American people are clamoring for prices to come down. They want us to work together to bring down costs. You can search all across our country, from New Hampshire to the Pacific Northwest, to a thousand towns in between, and you will not find anyone who is asking for their healthcare to become even less affordable. No, the only people who think that are Washington Republicans.

It doesn't have to be this way. In New Hampshire, when I was Governor, we expanded Medicaid and balanced the budget, and we did both on a bipartisan basis.

Now, there is wasteful spending that we need to cut, to be sure, but if the President and my colleagues listen to the American people, if they talked to families in New Hampshire, they would know that only in Washington, DC, is money used to help a child with autism go to school and reach their full potential regarded as a waste.

So before my colleagues try to pass this budget, the American people deserve to know why support for a child with asthma or treatment for someone struggling with addiction should be sacrificed to pay for another tax break for a billionaire. The American people deserve to know at what point the President decided that the health of their families was expendable. The American people deserve to know why the President is not interested in lowering costs but has instead decided to weaken our economy, hamper our workforce, and make life less affordable for more Americans.

I urge my colleagues to reverse course and work across the aisle on a bipartisan basis to protect Medicaid and lower costs for our families.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source