Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2019
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, on Monday the Trump administration doubled down on their assault on American healthcare by supporting an effort to completely eliminate the healthcare law through the courts. People scratched their heads, saying: Are they really doing this after trying for 2 years unsuccessfully and after losing the election?
Yes, they are. The action is no small matter. The Trump administration's radical support for the wholesale elimination of the healthcare law would send our healthcare system into certain chaos. If the Trump administration has its way, it would send premiums soaring for millions of Americans. It would revoke coverage for tens of millions more who gained coverage through medical expansions. It would strike protections for an estimated 133 million adults in America who have preexisting medical conditions, even people who get coverage from their employer.
Let me say that again. There are 133 million Americans who have preexisting medical conditions. If the Trump administration has its way, the insurance company could just tell those 133 million and their families: We cut you off. We don't want to pay for your insurance anymore because it is too expensive. Your daughter has cancer. Your wife has severe diabetes.
It is a disgrace. Let's not forget that the system would impose billions of dollars in new prescription drug costs on seniors in Medicare. The consequences are dire. That is why we are introducing an amendment to ensure that not a dime of the American people's money goes to the Trump administration's fight to destroy the entire healthcare system. Not one cent of the Department of Justice should be used to hurt Americans like this.
Donald Trump campaigned on ``End ObamaCare.'' Then, the Republican Party--and even we thought Trump himself--saw they had no replacement. This repeal and replace had no replacement. They couldn't come up with one.
What is the Republican Party now standing for? Here it is. ``The Republican Party will become the party of healthcare,'' says Donald Trump. Absolutely not. Here is what his tweet should say if he is being honest and telling the truth to the American people: The Republican Party will become the party that ended your healthcare.
You cannot have a situation in the Trump administration where President Trump says one thing and their Attorney General goes to court to do the opposite. You cannot or should not have a situation where Republican Senators get up and say we need to expand healthcare for people, and then they say not a peep when their own President tries to strip it away from them.
President Trump says the Republican Party wants to be the party of healthcare. Well, I say, God help the middle class if Republicans are the party of healthcare. What, dare I ask, is their plan? Let me ask Leader McConnell and every Republican Senator, and I hope their constituents will ask them, too, because this is the No. 1 issue across the country.
We should ask our Republican friends and the President: What is your plan to deal with prescription drug costs?
Costs are at an alltime high. Instead, they are supporting this lawsuit that would impose billions of dollars in prescription drug costs on seniors.
We should ask President Trump and Leader McConnell: What is your plan to get more people covered on high-quality health insurance that they can actually afford at a time when premiums are still rising because of sabotage by the Trump administration? How will they bring relief?
Instead, our Republican colleagues, by their silence, are assenting to a lawsuit that would kick tens of millions of people off insurance.
I ask President Trump, Senator McConnell, and our Republican colleagues: What is your plan to protect people with preexisting conditions?
Over and over again, the Republicans say they support keeping safeguards for preexisting conditions. Instead, they are supporting this lawsuit or, by their silence, assenting to their party's President's lawsuit that completely wipes away the protections for preexisting conditions.
The American people deserve answers because President Trump insisted yesterday that he has a ``plan that is far better than ObamaCare.'' We all know that that is not true. He just talks off the top of his head. He said it at the lunch.
President Trump, what is your plan that is better than ObamaCare? You may not have all of the details, but give us the main points.
When you are President, you have a responsibility, as people's lives are at stake. They need healthcare. It is not for you to simply say ``we have a better plan,'' file a lawsuit that gets rid of the existing plan, and then give people no inclination--no clue--as to what that plan is.
Why is this happening?
One, we know that President Trump has no fidelity issues. He talks off the top of his head. He doesn't know what the issues are all about. Regarding issues, he is the least informed President we have ever had in American history. He just says what he thinks sounds nice at the moment, and then his administration does the hard-right thing all of the time--the extreme thing--that has a narrow special interest but is not in the interest of the American people.
Mick Mulvaney
Madam President, President Trump's actual administration seems to be far to the right of even the mainstream of the Republican Party. Why does that happen? Well, here is one reason.
Mick Mulvaney is now Chief of Staff and was the head of the OMB, but he still has a lot of say over that Agency. It was reported last night that it was Mick Mulvaney, against the advice of others, who convinced President Trump to take this radical position on healthcare. So we all know who is holding the strings, who is putting in President Trump's head these hard-right ideas that his administration continually effectuates and of which he almost never backs off. We now seem to be living in the Mick Mulvaney administration.
He is the same person who said we need to end Medicare as we know it. That should send a chill down every American's spine. Let me repeat that. The Mick Mulvaney administration, of which President Trump is a willing follower, if you will, says: We should end Medicare as we know it.
Do Americans believe that? No. Do Republicans believe that? Most of them do not. Yet this man, Mulvaney--not elected--puts ideas in President Trump's head, and that is what President Trump does. Make no mistake about it--the ultimate responsibility is President Trump's, but when you wonder why the words the President says differ from so many administration policies--and it is the policies that are hurting Americans--the reason is Mulvaney.
Here is what the Mulvaney administration looks like: extreme budget cuts to the programs that the middle-class families depend on--cuts to the Departments of Education and Transportation; severe cuts to the Office of Science; severe cuts to the EPA; cuts to programs that are most in need, SNAP; faster cuts to Medicare; and repeated government shutdowns. It was reported yesterday that the administration is considering no more Fannie and Freddie--no more help for the middle class to buy a home. This is another great Mulvaney idea.
Mick Mulvaney was one of the five most hard-right people in the House of Representatives. He was one of the authors of the previous shutdown. His views are far, far away from the average American's. Donald Trump, who gets full blame for Mulvaney's ideas because he is enacting them, seems to be following him lock, stock, and barrel. If the President had actually campaigned on these Mulvaney ideas in 2016, he would have been roundly defeated.
If he goes to Michigan tonight and talks about these Mulvaney ideas, he will get booed even by his own supporters, for he enacts the Mulvaney ideas. His Justice Department is now suing to get rid of healthcare, which is something Mulvaney has always advocated for.
President Trump, your administration is now the Mulvaney administration.
That should terrify every single American, and it should terrify any thoughtful Republican Senator.
Make no mistake about it--Donald Trump's hard-right administration, which so hurts the middle class and so helps the narrow, wealthy, special, and corporate interests--the brain child of many of these ideas--comes from Mr. Mulvaney. He puts it into the cipher of Donald Trump. Donald Trump enacts it, and the American people suffer.
Puerto Rico
Madam President, on Puerto Rico, it has been 18 months since Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Irma devastated the people of Puerto Rico and the surrounding islands.
These were extraordinary disasters that required an extraordinary response, but President Trump has hardheartedly said that the island of Puerto Rico has received too much aid. He complained that the U.S. Government had already given $91 billion in relief.
Mr. President, stop making up your own facts, for $90 billion is the amount of damage these storms caused. The people of Puerto Rico are suffering. They have received a sliver of the funding they need.
It is hard to fathom the depths of cruelty that it takes for the President to treat the people of Puerto Rico this way. They are American citizens.
The Democrats have taken action. The House passed a comprehensive disaster bill 2 months ago. It would have provided aid to Puerto Rico and to the other States that are hurt. We want to help all of those States, as that is what Americans do, but Donald Trump has told our Senate Republicans: No aid for Puerto Rico. Instead of standing up and saying that it is wrong, that it is not fair, they seem to be going along. This is shameful. We have an opportunity to change that by fixing the disaster bill that is currently on the floor.
I would tell our Republican friends that we want to help people in the States where there is flooding in the Midwest, where there are wildfires in the West, where there are droughts, but the bill they are trying to pass here is never going to pass the House. They know that. To get disaster aid for the country, which is well needed in so many places, our Republican friends are going to have to tell Donald Trump his cold, cruel-hearted, and divisive policy must fall, his policy of not letting any of the already allocated aid be distributed to Puerto Rico. Mueller Report
Madam President, on one final matter--Mueller--yesterday and for the second time this week, Leader McConnell blocked our request that was made by the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Dianne Feinstein, to make public the full report authored by Special Counsel Mueller.
I thank Senator Feinstein for making the request and for standing up for transparency. As Senator Feinstein said, a four-page summary from a political appointee is hardly a sufficient substitute for Special Counsel Mueller's 2-year investigation. There were reports this morning that the Mueller report is over 300 pages. All we have gotten is a four-page summary by someone who was appointed by the administration and who, before he took office, felt the President could never--almost never--be called for obstruction of justice, which is one of the main parts of the Mueller investigation.
For Mr. Barr to quickly issue a four-page report in his attempt to try to exonerate President Trump and now to delay the release of an over 300-page report that has been written by Mueller so that the American people and we Senators and Congressmen cannot see what was written has too much of the odor of political expediency to help the man who appointed him, President Trump.
The American people have a right to know the full scope of the facts behind Russia's interference in our election. The American people have a right to come to their own conclusions about actions taken by this administration. The American people deserve to have full confidence in the integrity of our system and in the impartiality of the rule of law, and only the full release of the report can affirm that.
What I am saying here shouldn't be controversial. In the House, it passed 420 to nothing--the resolution to make the full report public-- voted for by such partisan defenders of the President's, like Representative Jordan and Representative Meadows.
Transparency, we all know, is all the more important because the Attorney General has made no secret of his antipathy toward this investigation and appears intent on holding the report secret for as long as possible. I guess his hope is to let the dust settle, and then no one will pay attention. Well, he is wrong about that. He is prolonging this. Remember, this Attorney General made clear that he was hostile to the special counsel and was opposed to Mueller's inquiry into obstruction of justice. Then he opines about it 2 days later without showing anybody any backing? That is so wrong.
According to press reports, in his phone call yesterday with Mr. Nadler, Mr. Barr would not even commit to releasing the whole report at any time. He wouldn't commit to a date. He was not even willing to disclose how many pages were in the special counsel's report, as if that were some kind of state secret.
As I said, since that conversation, there have been reports that it is over 300 pages. If it is, it is just disgraceful for Mr. Barr, who was able to read through it and summarize it in 48 hours, to now say he can't release it because he is busy culling it.
The Attorney General must end the stalling and the secrecy. It is not going to be a happy opening chapter for the Attorney General when history looks back on what he has done. We should make the report public now.
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