Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2026

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Kansas. And at the risk of getting him into political trouble, I am a huge fan of his, but I want to address the question that he asked, which I think is a legitimate one, which is: What is the hurry on the Affordable Care Act premiums?

There is a really straightforward answer, which is that people are getting letters tomorrow from their insurance carriers. Around 24 million people are going to get letters anytime from now until mid- November, and they are going to pay. Now, 24 million Americans are going to be told that because of the last tax bill that was just enacted by Trump and the Republicans, people are going to be paying an average of 114 percent more per person per month.

It is not like we just went into a lab and cooked up an issue to try to hijack some unrelated moving legislative vehicle. The reason for this is that 24 million Americans are specifically on the ACA exchange, and they are absolutely going to get hosed. And because we are all in the same risk pool, it is not just people on the ACA exchange that are going to see massive increases in their healthcare premiums; almost every American is about to see a spike in their healthcare premiums, just like they have seen electricity rates going up at double the rate of inflation, just like they have seen the price of vegetables go up by 39 percent, just like they have seen shortages of lumber and labor.

We have an opportunity to do something because our Republican colleagues--at least some of them--understand the magnitude of this problem for their constituents. So the normal thing to do in a functioning legislative body, where the President of the United States does not believe that he is an elected Monarch, is to try to negotiate some accommodation. After all, these are all of our constituents. It is not like they are exclusively in urban areas or something. They are not exclusively Democrats. In fact, there are slightly more Republicans than Democrats on the ACA exchange.

So if this were a normal functioning time in American-style democracy, the President of the United States would convene what they call the four corners--majority and minority leaders of the Senate; Speaker and minority leader of the House--and we would try to figure out whether there was an accommodation to be made to save our collective constituents from all this pain.

When Democrats had the trifecta--when Democrats had the House and the Senate and the Presidency--we didn't have any shutdowns. It wasn't because there is more good will on the Republican side toward continuing resolutions than there is on the Democratic side toward continuing resolutions. The reason is because Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi sat down with Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy--or whomever it was--and the President, and they figured out a deal. Even to raise the debt ceiling, Kevin McCarthy said: Not for free.

So this idea that the minority party, only this minority party, only in this time in the U.S. Senate history--we are to shut up and do whatever we are told. What is worse is they are asking the majority party to do the same thing.

This President believes that he is a Monarch. This President finds the legislative branch to be a nuisance. And you know what? The legislative branch is a nuisance. That is the architecture of the Constitution of the United States. We are supposed to be in a struggle with each other. We are supposed to argue and fight. And then we are supposed to come to an accommodation.

But we can't come to an accommodation until there is a meeting. So we are going to be here fighting for healthcare, and we are also going to be here fighting to reopen the government. If the clock strikes midnight and we are not able to avert this shutdown, then we are going to be here, ready to deal.

We understand we are not going to get everything we want. We understand we are in the minority. We understand we are out of power. But understand this: We are not powerless. We still represent, pessimistically, 47 percent of the--certainly, 47 percent of the Senate seats. But something like half the country wants us to represent their point of view. And the point of view that we are representing, by the way, is shared by most of the constituents who are represented by Republicans too.

And so there is still a pathway, but it has to be pursued. So the onus is on the President of the United States and the majority leader and the Speaker to find that pathway.

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