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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, more than 16 million people are going to lose their healthcare, and tens of millions of Americans are going to pay more for healthcare every month. Hundreds of rural hospitals are going to be forced to close, and we are going to plunge the country into trillions of dollars of new debt.

Now, what is this all for? Is it to improve our schools and roads? Is it to make housing and childcare more affordable? Is it because we are in the middle of a crisis that just has to be paid for or we are going to pay down the national debt? No. It is none of those things. It is because they want to cut taxes for the richest people to ever exist. And if that means you can't see your doctor or you have to pay hundreds of dollars more every month to pay for your healthcare, tough luck.

Now, here is the thing: Republicans actually know what they are walking into because people in their own States are telling them what is about to happen.

``We can't sustain serving our community the way we are with these cuts,'' one hospital leader in Kansas said.

A health executive in Texas wrote:

Cutting billions of dollars from [Medicaid] would have widespread and devastating consequences for Texans. Beyond the obvious impacts to people enrolled in the program, the collateral damage of program cuts will be felt across the board. Hospitals will do everything they can to weather the storm, but some may not survive. Others will have to increase their reliance on state or local support or reduce services. Access to care will decrease, especially for high-cost service lines like maternal [health] care and behavioral health. Jobs will be lost. The impact on communities--which rely on their hospitals for employment and growth--will be profound.

A Utah father who credited Medicaid with saving his own son's life said:

Without Medicaid, these life-saving treatments would have been financially impossible. There is absolutely no way we would have covered the cost on our own. . . . And in this way, our story is not unique. So many families insured by Medicaid could have to make difficult, life-altering decisions if Congress slashes funding.

A former Republican elected official in Georgia warned:

Cuts to Medicaid are not only fiscally irresponsible, but they could threaten the livelihoods of our fellow Georgians and the economic opportunities that consistently make our great state a top state for business.

So the stakes are clear: It is people's health. It is people's hard- earned money. It is people's lives. And whether you are in a red or a blue State, you will absolutely feel the weight of this terrible piece of legislation.

More than a quarter of nursing homes may close. Hundreds of rural hospitals will shutter. And for what? To pay down the debt because we are a nation at war, because we want to invest in infrastructure or schools or healthcare? No. The reason they are making these cuts to food assistance, the reason they are making these cuts to rural hospitals, the reason they are making these cuts so that people are going to have to pay several hundred dollars more per month for their own healthcare is to create enough revenue for the biggest tax cut, the biggest wealth transfer from working people to wealthy people in the history of the United States of America.

Even if you are not on Medicaid yourself, you likely know someone who is--a friend, a neighbor, a relative, a coworker. And, more than that, kicking tons of people in your community off of healthcare will drive up costs for everybody else and make high-quality care hard to find. You are going to pay more for less care--all for the biggest tax cut in American history for the people who need it the least.

I have no problem with the people who need it the least. But the truth is, they need it the least. If you are financially successful and you make $4 million a year, God bless. That is the American dream. It does not mean you need a tax cut, and it does not mean you need a tax cut paid for by reducing services, especially in rural communities.

The good news is this: We actually don't have to do this. There is no rush to do this. There is no clamoring among constituents in red or blue States to do this. This is an add-on.

What they want to do is extend the original tax cuts. I opposed those tax cuts, but I can understand that Republicans, as an article of faith, want to extend the tax cuts that their President enacted two terms ago--fair enough--good, solid, old-fashioned policy disagreements.

But then they just larded it up with stuff--giveaways to special interests, and cuts and cuts and cuts to things that people care about--left, right, and center.

We don't actually have to do it this way. You are going to pay more for less care, all so that billionaires have a little more money sitting in their accounts.

It is going to require four Republicans saying: Enough is enough.

I have heard a number of my Republican colleagues talk about how essential Medicaid is to their rural communities.

And it is not just the people who are on Medicaid. Obviously, those are the people you have to be primarily concerned with. But a lot of us go home and visit both urban and rural hospitals, and they all say the same thing, which is that, if you blow out 30 percent of your revenue, you can't function as an institution.

So it is not just a question of whether you personally are on Medicaid or you personally care about Medicaid. It is about: Does your rural hospital even survive after this bill is enacted?

Nobody wants this, and there is still time to kill this bill.

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