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Floor Speech
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Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I am going to make just a few brief points in response to my colleague Senator Husted's proposal.
This bill is part and parcel of what we have seen for years from the Republican Party--an attempt to undermine the Affordable Care Act in its entirety.
If this bill became law, it would undoubtedly still kick millions of people off their ACA coverage.
When Americans are calling out for help to lower costs, this bill would actually increase premiums by an average of over $1,000 for over 10 million people annually. And if that is not enough, Senator Husted's bill sneaks in another attack on women's right to control their own bodies, and it bans Marketplace insurance coverage of abortion.
I will end with this: I have worked on this policy for a long, long time. I care deeply about affordable healthcare and have been willing to work with anyone to deliver results for the people I represent. But the place for this debate--perhaps this offering--should have been this past June during the debate on President Trump's signature legislation, a major tax bill that disproportionately sends its benefits to the wealthiest among us. That is where we should have had an extensive debate on extending a tax break for working families and individuals to be able to afford their healthcare premiums, and if not during that debate, we should have been working across the aisle on this in the lead-up to the expiration of the last CR on September 30, the end of the last fiscal year.
But it is 5 days before the expiration of open enrollment--5 days. People have been shopping since November 1. They have seen what their costs were this past year, and they have seen what their costs are going to be next year.
I, along with my Democratic colleagues, have been pleading with Republicans to come to the table and negotiate on this and, by and large, they have refused. And then yesterday, just 1 day before we vote on a clean 3-year extension, we get this bill out of the blue. This bill is a deeply unserious proposal to a very serious problem.
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