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Floor Speech

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Mr. MARSHALL. Mr. President, here we are, day No. 2 of the Schumer shutdown, or should we call this the AOC shutdown? After all, when the puppet master gets outmaneuvered by his own radical Squad, who is really calling the shots? Shouldn't we give the Squad some credit here for this shutdown?

Now, let me say that a different way. This Democrat shutdown is nothing but a cynical political shutdown, with Senator Schumer kowtowing to his radical, leftwing extremists. He is desperately recoiling, fighting to stave off a primary and to save his party from the piranhas in their own midst. Look, I am sure he feels like he has been steamrolled by President Trump and the overwhelming ``America First'' mandate that 78 million American patriots who voted for real change.

Everything else--all other excuses--is just a pathetic smokescreen to hide their failures. But let's take a closer look at some of these Democrat excuses. Again, they are decoys; they are camouflage and why this is indeed a Schumer shutdown.

First of all, there is no substance to their arguments. They want to talk about healthcare. Boy, do Republicans want to fix healthcare, but the real problem is the cost of healthcare. Healthcare has gone up 400 percent in the last couple of decades. It is the cost of healthcare. All my Democratic friends want to do is just keep throwing more and more money, more and more subsidies, making big healthcare systems rich.

Premiums are going to go up 20 percent this year--20 percent. Again, healthcare is what is leading inflation. If it wasn't for healthcare inflation, we would probably be down closer to 2 percent. So regardless of what happens here in Congress in the next 3 to 4 months, your healthcare premium is going to go up 20 percent on average.

This shutdown is keeping us from working on the real problem, and that is the cost of healthcare. Think about Republican solutions that we have out there right now.

We have legislation that we call the Price Tags bill that we hope to debate, work up, and mark up in our healthcare committee this fall. What that bill does is it forces every hospital, surgery center, imaging center to put a pricetag on the procedures you are going to have done.

Can you imagine walking into a restaurant and not knowing the price of a good Kansas steak versus some cheap-grade steak from another country? You couldn't imagine that. So when you are sitting there, deciding whether to have your hip replaced at a hospital like in my hometown of Great Bend, America, versus having it done at another facility, you will see that you can have the same procedure done for maybe a fifth of what it costs at other facilities. By the way, we have better outcomes, and we have better customer service as well. Patients deserve pricetags.

You know, other solutions out there are expanding healthcare savings accounts where you can use pretax dollars for different opportunities as well.

If you really want me to solve the riddle of the cost of healthcare, we need to make America healthier again. That is why Republicans, under President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, were trying to pass policies which would lead to a healthier America.

Think about it--70 percent of Americans have a chronic disease. You think about heart disease and hypertension, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer, and mental health issues. Ninety percent of the healthcare dollars being spent in this country are spent on those chronic diseases.

Think about our youth. Twenty percent of our youth are on a prescription drug, 30 percent are obese, and 40 percent of our youth have a chronic disease. We have a mental health epidemic in our youth as well.

So if you want to drive down the cost of healthcare, we need to make a healthier America, we need more transparency, we need to promote innovation, and we need to turn patients into consumers again.

Then lastly and most importantly, we need to make America healthy again--and for all the right reasons. The benefit of driving down the cost of healthcare is just one of them. Think about this: America is spending 18 percent of its GDP on healthcare right now. Singapore is spending 4 percent. Most advanced countries are going to spend half of what we do on healthcare.

People ask, well, why are our outcomes worse? It is because we are sick. We have sicker people. The incidence of diabetes, hypertension-- all those things are going through the roof. That is why our outcomes aren't as good as other countries' are.

Rural healthcare. Let's talk about rural healthcare for a second. My goodness, do I care about rural healthcare. I was born in a rural hospital. I had an OB practice for 25 years in rural America. I was on call every day, every other day for 25 years. You can call my wife and ask her--we didn't sleep through the night for 25 years. We delivered a baby almost every day. Then I was blessed to lead a group of doctors and run that rural hospital for over a decade as well. I oversaw three health departments. If anybody understands the importance of rural healthcare, I think it would be me. That is why I have spent a lifetime trying to fix all of these riddles that we have right now.

Now, my friends across the aisle say that they are worried that rural hospitals are closing all of a sudden--all of a sudden--and that they want to try to fix this issue. Well, they have actually contributed to the problem.

But here is one of the most hypocritical things I have ever heard since being up here. So the Democrats say that they are closing the government because they want to save rural hospitals, but the first thing they are going to do is take $50 billion away from our rural health transformation funding--$50 billion from rural health transformation funding--something I have been working on with this administration since the New Year, what that would look like if we had the money. But no. What my friends across the aisle want to do is they want to control healthcare; they want to keep throwing good money after bad money. They think that Medicaid is going to save the day.

Let me tell you something about Medicaid. Only 5 percent of Medicaid funding goes to rural America. Five percent of Medicaid funding goes to rural America. Hospitals and doctors lose money on every Medicaid patient we see. Now, it doesn't mean we shouldn't take care of them. We took care of everybody in our hospital regardless of their ability to pay, regardless if they were a citizen or not. We didn't know, and we didn't care. We went in and took care of these patients. But certainly, running a private OB practice and running a hospital, I realized that we lose money on every Medicaid patient we see.

Having Medicaid is not the same as access to healthcare. Who in the world even thinks that could be the case? Talk to any doctor, talk to any patient that has Medicaid. Ask them--let's say they have a herniated disc in their back. Ask them how long it is going to take to get in to see a neurosurgeon. It is going to take 6 months; it is going to take a year.

So, in reality, probably less than half of the doctors, in a true measure, participate in Medicaid. It has to be the most failed system, the biggest waste of money I have ever seen. There are better solutions out there than Medicaid.

I am so excited about, again, solutions. Republicans have solutions. I am so excited about this transformation fund and the opportunity that does that.

Here is what is really rich--here is what is rich. So there are hospitals closing and pharmacies closing today, tomorrow, last year, but that is a result of the Democrats' failed policies. Our legislation that we passed this year--signature legislation that is going to change the course of America--none of that is going to really kick in for 2 or 3 years.

It is just beyond me for the leader of the Democratic Party to sit up here and cry about hospitals closing in rural America today and blaming Republicans. If there is any hospital closing today, tomorrow, next year, the Democrats own it. They own the failed policy, and America gets that. My gosh, I have never heard something so ridiculous in my life.

But, again, Republicans have solutions, and we want to fix it. One of the ways to fix the failure of why these hospitals are failing is the economy that hospitals--rural hospitals are a reflection of the local economy. As agriculture goes, so goes rural America, so goes these hospitals.

By the way, 97 percent of these rural counties voted for President Trump. He is never going to turn his back on them. We as Republicans are not going to turn our backs on them. I wake up every morning trying to figure out, how do we save rural hospitals and rural America? how do we recruit doctors to rural America? how do we recruit nurses to rural America? And all of a sudden, the Democrats have got salvation here, and they care about it? No. They are hiding behind that issue. They are hiding behind it because they don't have any substance to stand on.

Again, the ACA has been the rule of the land for 15 years now. If there are any hospitals failing today, and there are, it is because of the overregulation of the ACA. Just like banks consolidating, hospitals consolidating, healthcare consolidating--all these different entities are consolidating because of overregulation created by Democrats. Our rural transformation funding is going to set those rural counties free to do what they think is best with the money.

All right. Let's go to the next Democrat argument. Let's talk about these COVID-era subsidies for the ACA plans. What a joke. I just absolutely cannot believe they are going to hide behind this one.

So think back to the original ACA. The ACA sets up funding to help supplement insurance premiums for a group of people based upon their ability to pay. That is probably 70, 80 percent of the premium right now, on average, is the way it was set up to be. In some cases, it was 95 percent.

But then COVID comes along, and the Democrats boost those subsidies, so that now many Americans aren't contributing anything to those particular funds. And what this has led to is mass fraud, OK? So these COVID-era subsidies have led to mass fraud.

Let me put some dollars and cents on this. When the ACA was first written, they thought we would be spending maybe $25, $50 billion a year on those subsidies. Well, we are spending $150 billion a year on these subsidies. We think that probably a third of that is waste, fraud, and abuse, and I could spend the next half hour talking about why we think there is waste, fraud, and abuse within it. But the way it was created allows for waste, fraud, and abuse. I can't fix that today. I can't fix it tomorrow. We need to fund the government and get back to work on this issue, and we know how to do it.

But for Republicans to agree to these subsidies being continued, the first thing we have to do is to address the fraud. I bet that is a 90- 10 issue. I bet that 90 percent of Americans would like for us to fix the fraud in that issue and make sure the people who need it the most are getting the help.

So that is one issue on the COVID-era subsidies. The next big issue-- I want to go back to premiums, OK. That is the real issue. These premiums are going to go up 20 percent this year. So regardless of what we do here, the premiums are going to go up 20 percent.

That is where the sting is coming from, is how much these premiums are going up, and my friends across the aisle just want to keep throwing money at it. They want this corporate welfare where these subsidies are basically enriching big insurance companies. That is exactly what is happening. These subsidies are basically going to this consolidated insurance business out there.

Most States, like mine, only have two or three insurance carriers left standing. When these subsidies go up for the people with an ACA plan, guess what? They are going to use that as an excuse to increase your plan that you are getting through that hard-working job of yours as well.

So to have a meaningful discussion about these COVID-era subsidies, we need to--No. 1 is to address the fraud, and No. 2 is we need to address the rate of increase of these premiums as well.

And listen to this: Even if this COVID subsidy went away, the Federal Government on average would be paying 80 percent of the premium. So we would be paying 80 percent rather than 90 percent of the premium. But if the premium has gone up 20 percent, just think about the difference on 80 percent versus 90 percent. That is where the sting is truly coming from.

When do Democrats want to have a serious conversation about this, the real conversation about the cost of healthcare?

My friends across the aisle want to bring these two issues together. They want to, you know, take a hostage. In order to keep the government open, they are saying: You have to give us these COVID-era subsidies, to prolong them. They are supposed to expire December 31 of this year. The Democrats passed this. It was supposed to be for COVID, and, like all the other COVID subsidies that drove us into massive debt, there was a sunset on it. They wrote the law. If they didn't want it to sunset, why didn't they continue the program for infinity just like they did with the original subsidies?

So this, to me, is two different issues. We have the issue here of keeping the government open, and we have the issue here of healthcare. I want to take care of both of them, but it is going to take weeks, probably months, for us to come up with a solution for these COVID subsidies. So I don't think it is fair to keep the government closed down because they weren't willing to talk about this.

It is interesting that we didn't hear a thing about this--at least I didn't--from the minority leader, that he was concerned about this, until just a couple days ago. Again, it makes me think he wanted the shutdown. He wanted the shutdown to appease his liberal left base.

Here is another argument the Democrats are making. You know, there is a fight about healthcare for illegal aliens. I don't think anyone can argue that before our working-families tax-cut bill--our signature bill that is going to grow the economy--that before that legislation, that illegal aliens were getting healthcare. Even the CBO--and I hate to pick and choose when I use the CBO numbers--but the CBO said that 2 million illegal aliens were getting healthcare subsidies or free healthcare because of the loose, just unfettered process that States were using to verify who was eligible for Medicare.

That is not me; that is not a Republican; the CBO said 2 million illegal aliens were getting care each year on the backs of American taxpayers. I don't know if that number is perfectly accurate, but if it is 1 million, 2 million, or 3 million, certainly illegal aliens were getting free healthcare on the backs of American taxpayers.

So when the Democrats want to go in there and gut that bill and end the fixes, the loopholes we closed, I don't know how they can look America in the eye and say that is not the case.

But regardless, I think that is a small issue. I think that is a red herring. That is not really what the issue is. It is just one more thing they can argue about to get America's eyes off the true challenge within their own party.

The minority leader says we are not negotiating. I just think that is such an untruth, that we are not negotiating--my gosh. The Appropriations Committee--the Republican-led Appropriations Committee-- has been negotiating since President Trump was--actually, since we were--sworn in, in January.

And we have just nothing but compliments to Senator Susan Collins and her team and the Democrats on the Appropriations team. They are doing their job, but Leader Schumer--Minority Leader Schumer--wants to do this negotiation in the back doors. He wants to continue the status quo where, for the government funding, they go back behind a door in a closed office. The cameras are off, and they want to cut a deal.

You can talk about the four corners up here: the Speaker of the House, minority leader of the House, minority leader in the Senate, and then the majority leader, the head of the Senate here, of course, John Thune.

So Senator Schumer thinks they can go behind closed doors--and there are two New Yorkers in that room--and build all their bridges to nowhere. But Republicans want to fund the government in open daylight, through the Appropriations Committee, with the lights on and the cameras on.

The Appropriations Committee passes legislation. There are 12 buckets of funding to fund this discretionary spending that Senate Republicans are trying to lead here--12 buckets of funding. Again, under their great leadership, they have passed 8 of these 12 buckets out of committee. It is almost 90 percent of funding for the Federal Government--discretionary spending, again, of course--that they have already finished the job on.

Senator Susan Collins has done an incredible job getting it through committee--bipartisan. You look at the votes on these bills, and it is 25 to 0, 23 to 2, 24 to 1--huge bipartisan victories done in the light of day. And then those should come here to the floor, and let America see exactly what is in them.

And if there is a bridge to nowhere in there, let me stand up here and offer an amendment to strike that funding, and then let that Senator defend why his or her State should have this bridge to nowhere.

That is what is supposed to happen in the light of day, but Senator Schumer wants to go back to the Dark Ages, where he can go in a back room--a back, New York room--and then cut a deal for all of his bridges to nowhere.

The House, I believe, has passed all 12 of their funding bills out of committee.

Now, we have got three of those across the floor. There are five more sitting there, but Senator Schumer refuses to release anybody on his side to vote for them, even though they voted for them in committee. Why? It is part of the political theater. He wants this shutdown.

So I think America sees this, that we wanted to negotiate in good faith, but Schumer's idea--Senator Schumer's idea--of negotiating is now to go behind closed doors, where he is one of four people in the room, and then go tell the President, who was elected by 28 million people, and he wants to tell him what to do.

So I asked, you know, as we go through this process--I asked myself this morning: So what are AOC and the Squad, who are empowered by the liberal legacy media, asking Senator Schumer to do or really telling him what to do? What are AOC, the Squad, the liberal media--what are they demanding from Senator Schumer?

Well, they told him to take a hostage, right? So he did. He took a hostage. He took these COVID-era subsidies as hostage and the $1.5 trillion of added funding as hostage, and now they are asking him to shoot the hostage.

So the Squad and Senator Schumer, they took the bait. They took the bait--hook, line, and sinker--like jumping into Brer Rabbit's briar patch. And guess what. They are about to get mowed down like dry cornstalks in a Kansas tornado. They took the bait. They took the bait, empowering the White House to finally shrink this Federal Government, this monster of a beast that we have here now.

You know, when Joe Biden was sworn in, in 2021, there were about 2.8 million Federal employees. So President Biden started with 2.8 million. By the time he finished, we had over 3 million Federal employees.

Now, President Trump is going to split the difference there. So we are still not back to pre-COVID, pre-Biden levels of Federal employment.

Look, I am grateful for every Federal employee, and many of them do incredible work. But I think it is no secret that we could all be a little more efficient, that we all could work a little harder. And if we had a few less regulations, I think we would need a few less Federal employees as well.

I don't want to sound callous or not caring. I am grateful for every job an American has. But my goal would be to help move some of these people with some of these Federal jobs and move them into the real world and adding to GDP rather than subtracting from GDP. That would be my goal.

There is a reasonable number of people we need to do the work of the Federal Government, but I just think going from 2.8 million pre-COVID to over 3 million just seems to be too much.

So, like I said, the Squad has led the Democrat Party into Brer Rabbit's briar patch, and they are about to get mowed down like cornstalks in a Kansas twister.

I think the last thing I want to go back to here is that the Democrats were saying that they really want to add $1.5 trillion to our debt. Again, we have $37 trillion in national debt now as a nation. We are spending almost $3 billion a day on interest. That is right, America--$3 billion a day on interest alone, a trillion dollars a year. And they want to add $1.5 trillion to our national debt.

But get this: In November of this last year, America rejected that plan, OK. That is why the voters gave Republicans the White House, the House, and the Senate. They didn't want us to borrow another $1.5 trillion.

So what is motivating the Squad? What is motivating Senator Schumer to do this, to shut down the government? What is motivating their lust for power and their control of the American people?

You know, I think the socialists have always thought, if you controlled healthcare, that is the first step in controlling the people, right? So what is motivating them?

I think No. 1 is--let's just be frank here: It is Trump derangement syndrome. I think that is their No. 1 motivation to shut the government down. It is Trump derangement syndrome. They have a hatred for President Trump that I have never seen anything like this before in my life.

I think the second reason is the liberal left has not realized they lost the election. You know, you go through these stages of grief and denial. That is the first one. The liberals have still not realized they lost the election. Seventy-eight million people voted for Republicans to control the House, the Senate, and the White House. They are rejecting the Democrats' lust for power to control Americans, to borrow from our grandchildren. So that is their motivation.

Look, if they want to change these policies, then go win the election. If you want to change the policies, go win the election. You know, I think back to 2020, and the Democrats had a sweep, right? The Democrats swept the elections in 2020, and they added $2 trillion a year in debt. So they grew the budget from about $5 trillion to $7 trillion overnight. But when it came to keeping the government open, the Republicans didn't go back to them and say: Hey, we are going to keep the government open if you decrease your spending by $2 trillion a year.

We didn't take that hostage. We could have. We could have. Does that make sense, comparing the 2020 election to this election? The Democrats swept in 2020. They came in and added $2 trillion of spending. But over a dozen times, Republicans walked the plank and said: We will keep the government open.

I wasn't happy about it then. I am not happy about it now. I am not happy about the spending levels that we are fighting for right now. I think that they are way too much.

If you want to continue your liberal, socialist policies, Democrats, go win an election. Go win an election. We came through with a bill for America to cut taxes, to grow jobs, to make the government more efficient, and look at what is happening. The gas prices are down. Grocery prices are down. The border is secure. All of those types of things are happening under Republican leadership.

We want to address the cost of healthcare. We truly, truly do. I want to point out that we are just not going to negotiate borrowing another $1.5 trillion for continued throwing money at healthcare issues in order to keep the government open.

Again, these are apples and oranges. We need to open the government back. We need to fund the government for a couple of months--a clean CR. Let Senator Collins and her team, working with Democrats, get that other 10 percent of funding across the finish line. In 2 months' time, we can bring those bills to the floor in front of the American public, debate them, offer amendments, make Senators defend their bridges to nowhere, as I call them, and then continue to work on healthcare.

And it is not going to be easy. It is going to be painful. When $5 trillion is being spent on healthcare in this country every year, and all these big corporations are grabbing that money as it goes by their front desk, it is not going to be easy to drive down the cost of healthcare, but we have to do it.

To me, this is common sense. We are asking the Democrats to vote for a clean CR, based upon levels of spending that every Senate Democrat in here that was in office voted for just 7 months ago. Seven months ago, every Democrat in here voted for these spending limits.

Again, a dozen times under Joe Biden, Republicans walked that plank and kept the government open. I pledge to you; I pledge to every Democrat: No one is going to work harder than I will to help solve this riddle for healthcare, focused on driving the cost of healthcare down.

But at the end of the day, the shutdown keeps us from doing the real work of the people, from having real debates about the cost of healthcare, our national debt, our spending, and all those things. During a shutdown, things freeze up here, and we can't do the work that we need to do in our communities to address these different problems.

One of our Presidents once said this, and I am going to quote him:

I know that it is said that one of the easiest things in the world is to give away somebody else's money. But government does not have money except the money it takes from the people. And so every time we talk about spending money on this or that program--

On healthcare or COVID subsidies-- let us remember that the government has no money except what it takes from the people. And the people know that.

And they are feeling it. They are feeling the pain of the government taking so much money. That is my quote.

I go back to the President's quote here:

And the people are tired of big government taking all the money they earn.

Boy, if you are a Senator up here and you are listening to anybody back home, I think you understand folks back home are tired of Big Government taking all the money they can earn.

So I ask my friends across the aisle--and they truly are friends. There is not an enemy. There is not a Democrat I would call an enemy. President Reagan said he had no political enemy, only political opponents. There is no difference than when we see gladiators on Sunday playing these football games, and at the end of the game, they are shaking each other's hands. Both parties should fight for what they think is right. But if we stay fixed on the goals--the common goals-- working toward a balanced budget, keeping the government open, driving down the cost of healthcare, and all of these things, I bet most of us agree on those goals.

But in the meantime, we need to keep the government open. We need to pass a clean CR.

Again, let's let the Appropriations Committee continue their negotiation to do their job, as we all work together up here.

So as long as we stay on those same goals--those same goals, like I said--we want to keep the government open. We want to work toward a balanced budget. I want to fix healthcare. I want to fix the cost of healthcare.

To anyone up here who agrees on those same goals, I will reach out my hand across the aisle, and I will pledge that we will listen and work together in good faith. But for today, let's pass a clean CR.

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