Budget Reconciliation
Floor Speech
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Ms. BALDWIN. I rise today to speak about the importance of Medicaid for families in Wisconsin and across the Nation. I will be joined by my colleagues tonight to shine a light on what Republicans in the House and the Senate are up to. They are moving forward with their plans to literally rip away healthcare from millions of Americans in order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest and large corporations.
I am going to start with some facts: Medicaid provides healthcare to over 70 million Americans, including over 30 million children and 8 million seniors. Medicaid provides essential care for about 10 million adults with disabilities.
Medicaid helps almost two-thirds of all nursing home residents have a safe roof over their heads. Medicaid is a lifeline that helps rural hospitals keep their doors open. It is also the single largest payer for treatment of opioid and other substance-use disorders, and it covers care for other serious mental illnesses.
Now, in my home State of Wisconsin, more than 1.2 million people are enrolled in Medicaid. One out of three children get their healthcare through Medicaid, as well as one in three people with disabilities.
Four in seven nursing home residents rely on Medicaid, and more than one-third of all births that happen in Wisconsin are covered by Medicaid. But at the end of the day, this is about the people behind those numbers. It is about the grandmother living in a nursing home. It is about the pregnant woman planning to give birth at a rural hospital.
It is about the child who grows up in a low-income home who otherwise would not have access to healthcare. It is about a hard-working mother trying to keep herself and her kids healthy. It is people like Lynn from Northeast Wisconsin. She is a mom to a 23-year-old son named Henry. Henry has cerebral palsy and autism. Lynn wrote to me a couple weeks ago after learning about the Republican budget.
Lynn wrote:
Henry's needs are significant, and he requires full assistance in all aspects of his life. While we have private insurance through my husband's job, Medicaid has funded a great deal of care throughout Henry's life, from private and school-based therapies, to medications, to orthopedic surgery, to incontinence products, to transportation to and from school, to the day program he is currently in. I am not sure what his life looks like without Medicaid.
Renee, a 60-year-old cancer patient from Milwaukee also wrote to me. Renee has stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. It is incurable, and she relies on Medicaid for the treatment that is keeping her alive. Renee shared with me:
Without Medicaid, I would be forced to ration or forego cancer treatment, hastening my death, or send me and my husband into bankruptcy trying to keep me alive.
That would be an impossible choice. I can tell you after hearing from my constituents who are learning about these Republican plans to gut Medicaid, people are scared. They are scared about what their lives are going to look like without healthcare. I am hearing from doctors; I am hearing from nursing homes, clinics; I am hearing from hospitals; I am hearing from Native American Tribes and Tribal organizations. They will all have impossible choices to make that impact the healthcare of millions of Americans if Republicans are successful in pushing through their cuts to Medicaid.
This isn't a red or a blue State issue. Cuts to Medicaid hurt people in all States, and when people find that their healthcare is ripped away, Republicans are going to have to explain why they decided to give their billionaire friends a tax cut and pay for it by taking away healthcare from seniors and children.
To them, that is the whole ball game: to fight every which way to make room in their budget to give big corporations and the wealthiest a tax break.
You will hear this evening from several of my colleagues about why Medicaid is so vitally important, and I am sure they are going to tell you stories from their home States.
Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle need to understand the consequences of their proposals and make a decision: Are billionaires really more important to you than the seniors and children and people with disabilities that you represent?
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Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, tonight, you have heard from me and my colleagues about the importance of Medicaid and what this critical program means for our constituents, those we represent here in the Senate. You have heard about parents concerned about what their child's life would look like without Medicaid. You have heard about people concerned for their elderly parents. You have heard about cancer patients who would face bankruptcy or an early death if they lost Medicaid.
The stories that have been told tonight are just a few examples of the monumental impact that Medicaid has had on communities across this great country. Medicaid is a lifeline for children, for seniors, for rural communities. It helps keep hospitals and community health centers and nursing homes open. Cutting Medicaid is, quite simply, an attack on the health and well-being of families. It is an attack on children and seniors. It is an attack on our neighbors, our friends, and our families. It is an attack on our most vulnerable.
These cuts will be falsely framed. They will be falsely framed as reforms or minor alterations to a program in the guise of saving money. These cuts will falsely be framed as tackling waste, fraud, and abuse. But make no mistake, stripping away healthcare from a low-income kid or nursing home funding for our parents and grandparents is not a reform for getting rid of fraud.
If my colleagues really wanted to go after waste in Medicaid, they would support and empower the inspector general, whose very job it is to root out waste, to root out fraud, to root out abuse, not sit idly by while Trump fires her. Yes, that is right--President Trump fired her. And the money that would be so-called saved will just be going to line billionaires' pockets even further, not to lower costs like Republicans have promised or to help hard-working Americans. These cuts go against the wishes of 70 percent of the American public, who want to see Medicaid protected.
My colleagues and I have made it clear that cuts to Medicaid are damaging to the entire country, and I hope that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will take that to heart when they are thinking about taking Medicaid away from our constituents.
I know you have heard a lot of stories tonight, but I want to close with just one more.
Taylor from Appleton, WI, wrote to me about her son Oliver. Oliver is almost 2 years old, and Oliver has a rare disease that impacts his kidneys, his eyes, and other organs. Oliver relies on Medicaid for lifesaving medications, therapies, and treatments. Without Medicaid, the cost of medication that slows the progression of the disease and his specialized care would be absolutely unaffordable.
Taylor said:
Medicaid is not just a program--it is a lifeline for children like Oliver. Without it, families would be forced to go without life-saving care or face crippling medical debt. The burden of his treatments, therapies, and future kidney transplants would be impossible to bear without Medicaid's support. I urge you to protect Medicaid funding and ensure that children like Oliver have access to the care they need to survive and thrive. The future of children with complex medical needs [absolutely] depends [upon] it.
Listen to people like Taylor, and think about children like Oliver. Stripping away healthcare from Americans--all to pay for tax breaks for big corporations and billionaires--is not what the American people want. It is not what the American people need.
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