Healthcare, The DREAM Act, and Tax Reform

Floor Speech

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Mr. President, we had some good news--or I should say the American public had some good news today in the announcement from the Republican leader that the Senate will not be proceeding to debate what is known as the Graham-Cassidy legislation, the latest version of TrumpCare, which would have had a devastating impact on our healthcare system and created harm throughout the country and in my State of Maryland. In fact, I know millions of Marylanders will be breathing a sigh of relief as a result of this decision.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the personal testimonials of Marylanders who, in the last few days, have sent to me their very powerful stories about how the Graham- Cassidy legislation would have harmed their loved ones.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:

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Now that we have decided not to vote on that legislation, it is essential that this Senate move forward expeditiously to take up bipartisan legislation that has been in the works through Senator Alexander and Senator Murray. Those conversations were bearing fruit. They were productive until the Senate decided to veer off, once again, to try to pass legislation that would have destroyed the Affordable Care Act. But now that we have decided not to go down that path, we have to quickly come back to those bipartisan talks and adopt some commonsense measures to strengthen the insurance system in a smart and targeted way.

There were many commonsense ideas that are part of those discussions, including making more permanent the so-called cost-sharing provisions, which help to lower the costs of healthcare and help to reduce the premiums, the copays, and the deductibles, and the reinsurance provisions that also have that effect, as well as discussions about how we might be able to streamline waivers within the Medicaid system without sacrificing or jeopardizing the important principles and protections that Medicaid provides on a national level.

We know we have to move quickly on this front because insurance companies all over the country have already started or are on the brink of starting the process of announcing their premiums. Unless this Senate takes action, we are going to see many high premiums. So we have to move quickly. As we do, the White House needs to stop their efforts to undermine and sabotage the Affordable Care Act.

On day one of his Presidency, President Trump adopted an Executive order that began to sabotage that program. We are already seeing the impact when it comes to some of the early premium announcements we have seen from insurance companies that offer insurance in the exchanges. That decision--that early Executive order--has created a big spike. So the President needs to act right away to assure the folks who provide healthcare throughout the country that he is going to stop the sabotage and begin to make sure that we stabilize those markets. It is under his control to say today, if he wanted, that he will continue those cost- sharing payments until the Senate and the House adopt permanent legislation to address those issues.

So it is really important that the Trump administration take those actions now to avert increasing premiums in the exchanges in the days to come. It is also essential that the Senate move forward on that legislation.

I hope we will also move forward with the continuation and some strengthening and modifications of the Children's Health Insurance Program. Again, there is bipartisan agreement on that proposal. We need to move forward right away with the support for community health centers because that authority will also expire.

I hope we will then get on with the business of putting into law the agreement in principle that was reached by President Trump and the Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate to provide protections for the Dreamers. As we all know, the President lit the 6-month fuse on these young people who were brought here through no fault of their own, and it is incumbent on all of us to make sure that these young people, who have grown up knowing only America as their country and who have grown up pledging allegiance to the flag, not face the threat of deportation 6 months from now. That is what they are facing as of this moment. The Senate should act quickly to pass the bipartisan Dream Act.

I hope we will also move forward in a bipartisan way on the important issue of tax reform because I think all of us agree that our Tax Code could be simplified. There is a lot of junk in our Tax Code that has been put there by powerful special interests who were able to hire high-priced lobbyists to exempt themselves from certain tax provisions that all other Americans have to pay. We need to clear out that underbrush and make other important reforms, and we can simplify the Tax Code.

As we do that, I was very much hoping that we would take the advice of our colleague, Senator McCain, who said we need to get back to the regular order. We need to get back to the Senate conducting its business in a transparent manner. We need to have hearings. We need to bring witnesses from all different perspectives and points of view to testify as to the impact of tax reform proposals.

We short-circuited that process when it came to healthcare, and the result was a healthcare bill that the overwhelming majority of the American people rejected, including every single patient advocacy organization that weighed in on that bill--from the American Cancer Society to the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association. We have seen that very long list, with all of the healthcare providers, from the nurses to the doctors to the hospitals. Hospitals in rural areas, suburban areas, and urban areas all said that the healthcare bill that did not go through the regular process and did not go through the regular order was deeply flawed and would hurt America.

We should learn a lesson from that. The lesson we should learn is that tax reform, which also has an incredibly wide-reaching impact on our economy and on our country, should go through the regular order of debate. It is very alarming to see that, as of now, it appears that the process on tax reform is going to go through the same short-circuited effort as we saw with respect to healthcare, because what we have seen is that the Senate Budget Committee, on which I am proud to serve, will soon--maybe as early as next week--be taking up a budget bill that will include what are known as budget reconciliation instructions, which would provide for a tax cut that would be deficit-financed. What does that mean? It means that we would be cutting taxes and not paying for them. We would be cutting taxes and putting it on the American credit card and, as a result, dramatically increasing our debt. In fact, the reports indicate that the proposal will actually green-light a $1.5 trillion increase in the Federal deficit.

Now, I have heard our Republican colleagues in the House and in the Senate for years talk about the fact that the debt is a huge burden overhanging on our economy. The debt is a big problem, and we need to deal with it. In fact, a few months ago, Leader McConnell said that any tax overhaul plan would ``have to be revenue-neutral'' because of the ``alarming $20 trillion Federal debt.'' Yet, just months after that statement, we are told that we are probably going to get a proposal that would actually green-light--open the door--to increasing the Federal debt by $1.5 trillion in order to provide a tax cut.

Now, the Democrats have put forward some principles for tax reform that I believe reflect the views of the American public. What we have said is this. No. 1, tax reform should be there to help the middle class and working families with some relief, and we should not be providing millionaires in the top 1 percent with yet another tax cut windfall. That should not be the priority of the country. In fact, Secretary Mnuchin, when he was testifying during his confirmation hearings, put forward something that we called the Mnuchin rule, which said that there should be no net tax cut for the very wealthy. So we have adopted that as one of our principles for tax reform.

We have also said what Leader McConnell said a few months ago, that tax reform should not add to the deficit and debt. We shouldn't pass that burden on to taxpayers and future generations to pay the interest on that debt.

Finally, we have said that it should go through the regular order, as Senator McCain indicated, where we have that debate in an open forum so that everybody can understand the impact and have their say before people try to rush it through the Senate in a short period of time. So I hope that is what we will do. These reports that we are talking about short-circuiting the process are alarming.

Then, we just heard within the last few days that, in addition to creating a process that would fast-track tax cuts that could go overwhelmingly to the wealthy and add to our deficit, this reconciliation bill will be written in a way that might allow us to try to fast-track the destruction of the Affordable Care Act again. We have finished this debate for this fiscal year, but suggestions are that it will open the door to destroying the Affordable Care Act through that fast-track, so-called reconciliation process in the months ahead.

So we would have in one piece of legislation a proposal that says: Let's cut taxes for very wealthy people, and it will add to the deficit, but we are also going to try to reduce the deficit a little bit by cutting healthcare for millions of Americans.

We thought we just had that debate, and we thought the American public just weighed in on that debate. The result of the American public's weighing in was very clear, and that is why we are not voting on that this week in the Senate. We should not open the door again to that kind of fast-track process that could do such grave harm to the healthcare of the American people.

So I hope that when it comes to tax reform, we will take a different path. As I indicated, there are things we can and should do to simplify our Tax Code. What we should not do is what we have seen in the past.
What we saw in the past in the early 2000s was this fast-track procedure used to pass tax cuts that went overwhelmingly to the wealthiest Americans. In fact, after that tax cut was put in place, what went up was the income of the top 1 percent. What went up was the deficit and the debt, and everybody else was left flat or sinking. So that would be a terrible mistake.

For example, we are told that part of this will be eliminating entirely the so-called estate tax. Right now, the estate tax only applies to estates over $11 million, for couples--over $11 million. So 0.2 percent of Americans are impacted by the estate tax, and they are the wealthiest of the very wealthy. Yet this proposal says we are going to actually increase the debt by $1.5 trillion in order to make room for tax cuts that benefit the top two-tenths of 1 percent of the American public.

That is heading in the wrong direction. I am pretty confident that, at least, in my State of Maryland, the overwhelming majority of our citizens would be very much opposed to that effort. What always happens is that, when it comes to cutting taxes for the very wealthy or for powerful special interests, many of our Republican colleagues here forget about all the talk about the importance of the deficit and debt. It is OK to run up a $1.5 trillion debt on top of our already high debt in order to provide tax cuts. But then, when those debts go up, always the conversation comes around to cutting--cutting our investments in education; cutting Medicare, turning it into a voucher program, as various Republican budgets in the House and Senate have proposed over the years; cutting Medicaid, which is what the Graham-Cassidy bill would have done and, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it is over a $1 trillion cut, and that is before it went over a total cliff in the outyears.

So let's, please, colleagues, learn the lesson from how this healthcare fiasco unfolded. When it comes to things like tax reform, let's proceed in a bipartisan way. Let's begin in the coming week to get back to the bipartisan discussions on healthcare, so that as we head into the fall, people are not going to experience wounds that are inflicted by the lack of action by this Congress--by this Senate and this House.

I thank you, Mr. President. I hope we can get back to regular order at some point in time and really do the people's work the way it is intended to be done--in an open, transparent, and bipartisan way.

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