-9999

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WARNOCK. Mr. President, I believe in healthcare. Your health--my mother told me a long time ago--was everything, so take care of your health. It is vital. It is essential. I believe that healthcare is a human right. It is certainly something that the wealthiest Nation on the planet and in the history of humankind can and ought to provide for all of its citizens. It is right, it is fair, but it is also smart. A healthy nation is a strong nation. Healthy children are ready to learn.

That is why I have worked so hard and so long with my colleagues on this issue. As a matter of fact, long before I came to the Senate, I had been focused on this issue of healthcare, trying to get my home State of Georgia to expand. I keep preaching that sermon because right now, there are more than 500,000 Georgians who are in the healthcare coverage gap.

I came here in 2017, to this place, not as a Senator but as a pastor and as an activist. I remember getting arrested, I believe in 2017, when there were major healthcare cuts on the table. As I began to make my argument and gather with other pastors in the Rotunda, the Capitol Police--very professionally, but they began to say to us: Pastors, you can't gather and pray in the Rotunda. We will have to arrest you.

What they didn't understand is that I had already been arrested. My mind and my imagination had been arrested by this idea that surely the American Nation can do better than this.

Healthcare is a human right.

Dr. King, who led the church that I am still honored to lead, said that of all the injustices, inequality in healthcare is the most shocking and the most inhumane.

That is why I was proud to join my colleagues and I am proud to stand with my colleagues in this fight. This is about 22 million Americans who will see their healthcare premiums double; some, triple; and some, quadruple.

This is not theoretical stuff for me. These are the people in my community. These are folks sitting in the pews of my church. Many of them will lose their healthcare if something doesn't happen.

A few weeks ago, I was at the Evans County Memorial Hospital in Evans County. I have to tell you, that is a red district. I don't have a whole lot of votes. I have some. Claxton, GA--known for fruitcakes. I was at that hospital, and I can tell you that those folks were already worried because of the draconian cuts to Medicaid in the Big Beautiful Bill--the so-called Big Beautiful Bill.

Fifteen million Americans already stand to lose their healthcare, and then the premiums are raised for 22 million Americans while giving Elon Musk and people like him a tax cut? That is beyond the pale of partisanship. For me, that is not about Democrats and Republicans. You ask ordinary people on the street if they think that is fair.

I can tell you that those folks in Evans County--many of whom did not vote for me, but I am fighting for them because I am their Senator too. They are worried about it.

That is why we have been in this fight, and that is why we continue to stand to this very day. It is day 38. We are holding vigil because of the pain of the people we represent. There is a lot of pain to go around: 22 million whose premiums may go up or have gone up--they are seeing it on the portals right now; Federal workers who have been furloughed; the kids who--like I was--are in Head Start. We have Head Start centers that are about to shutter because of the government shutdown.

Let's be honest. The folks on SNAP were dragged into this fight. They were not a part of this. They were dragged into this fight. There are already legal provisions to make sure that they are cared for. And this administration right now is defying a court order to feed America's hungry people.

With all of that pain from the crisis in healthcare, from the ongoing government shutdown, we come to our sisters and our brothers on the other side, and we extend a hand of compromise, because it hasn't taken me long to learn, really, that is the only way you get anything done in this body.

I work all of the time with colleagues with whom I disagree about 90 percent of the time, because it is not about them, and it is not about me; it is about the people we represent.

The Founders were wise to organize our government in such a way that that is the only way to have sustainable change, is to do it on a bipartisan basis.

My colleagues have taken their position, and we have taken ours. Here we are at an impasse. But I represent a State that elected me and Donald Trump, so they expect us to figure it out.

Sometimes, when I am driving my car--I have a 9-year-old and a 6- year- old, a 9-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son. Sometimes they are in the back seat having a disagreement: He looked at me. She touched me. Then they say: Daddy--you know, they call on me.

Here is what I say more often than not: Figure it out. The two of you in the back seat of the car--that is your sister; that is your brother. We are all in the same car. We are trying to get to the same destination. Figure it out.

We are all in the same car tonight, Democrats and Republicans.

There is a way in which the poor and the wealthy--there is a way in which they are all in the same car. COVID reminded us of that. Before we had a vaccine, if my neighbor had the virus, I, too, was in peril. That didn't make my neighbor my adversary; that means I have a vested interest in making sure my neighbor has coverage.

So here is the proposal: a 1-year, clean extension of the ACA subsidy. You know that is not what we want. You know that if we had it our way, we would make it permanent. That is not what we fought for 38 days for--a 1-year extension--but we are offering that after standing for 38 days. A 1-year extension, and then let's sit down, and, in the words of Scripture, let us reason together. Let us have a conversation. Let's reopen the government. Let's extend healthcare to folks who, in real time, are opening up the portal, and they have sticker shock. And then let's sit down and figure it out because, if we are honest, the status quo is not working very well for anybody.

Anybody who is trying to defend the status quo has not been talking to ordinary people. There are a lot of things that need to be fixed. And we can do that, but we have to reopen the government and give people a little bit of hope--give those 22 million Americans hope, give the 44 million Americans who need SNAP some hope, give our Federal workers some hope.

There is an African-American proverb that says: When the elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.

It is the grass roots in Georgia and all across the Nation right now who are suffering because too often the politicians make the politics about the politicians rather than about the people.

Let's center the people. If we center the people, we will compromise and we will figure it out.

In closing--nobody believes a Baptist preacher when he says ``in closing''--I have worked with Members of the Presiding Officer's party on a whole range of things. And at the risk of embarrassing him, Ted Cruz and I even work together every now and then. And I mention him because, early in my tenure here, he and I worked on a little thing-- just a little provision--to try to get a little bit closer to building out this interstate, I-14, that would run through Georgia all the way to Texas.

The same road that runs through Texas runs through Georgia. And if we can get that road built out, when it is time to get on that road, nobody asks you: Are you a Democrat or are you a Republican? Nobody asks you about your religion or if you have a religious tradition at all. Nobody asks you. Some folks are going to church. Some are going to the mosque. Some are going to temple. Some are going to the park. Some are going to the beach. But they all get on the same road trying to get to wherever they are going.

There is a road that runs through this American experience. There is a road that runs through our humanity that ought to connect all of us together, that ought to remind us that we all want our children to thrive and we all want our families to have a future. Let us make haste to that road and walk toward a brighter American future.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source