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Floor Speech

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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I want to say a very special thank-you to Chairman Wyden for coming here tonight to talk about the consequences of default. Our whole Nation needs to tune in and pay attention to this because this is literally about the future of our country.

Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans are holding America's economy hostage. Even worse, the Republicans are holding America's good name around the world and America's promise that we pay our debts hostage.

Instead of passing an increase in the debt ceiling, Republicans have put forward a set of incredibly damaging proposals that would hurt families around the country, proposals that are so unpopular that the only way that Republicans could possibly pass these proposals is to threaten to derail the entire economy if they don't get their way.

Now, let's be clear. Kevin McCarthy is the only one who will not take default off the table. Joe Biden has said no default. Chuck Schumer has said no default. Hakeem Jeffries has said no default. Even Mitch McConnell has said no default. But Kevin McCarthy is still driving this Nation toward default.

Now, every aspect of the House Republican proposal is deeply harmful, but I am here today to talk about three of the most wrongheaded provisions in their plan: the threat to take away health coverage for more than 21 million Americans; the threat to take away food assistance from 1 million people struggling with hunger; and the threat to take away income assistance for our poorest families.

Republicans' assault on Medicaid, SNAP, and TANF is no surprise. For years, Republicans have worked to undermine these programs which protect the most vulnerable Americans.

People enrolled in these programs are already walking a tightrope to make ends meet. Now Republicans want to use an old trick to make it even harder by trapping applicants in a maze of burdensome and unnecessary paperwork.

Republicans call these rules ``work requirements.'' I call them ``unworkable requirements.'' We need to call these proposals for what they are: a bald effort to kick people off the programs they need to survive.

The unspoken Republican mantra is: Let them get sick. Let them starve. And let them live on the streets with no hope.

Let's be clear. The Republican demands are pure politics, not a serious solution to a serious problem.

Currently, over 90 percent of people on Medicaid are either employed, in school, living with a disability or a debilitating illness, or caring for a baby or a disabled loved one. About three in four people receiving food assistance and 60 to 80 percent of parents receiving income assistance were employed within a year of being in the program. In fact, States that had expanded their Medicaid Program report not only better health outcomes and financial stability for people enrolled in the program but also higher employment numbers--that is higher, not lower, rates of employment when people can just get a little help. In fact, when the Congressional Budget Office studied the Republican Medicaid proposal, they found that it would have ``no change in employment or hours worked by Medicaid recipients.''

So let's not kid ourselves. This Republican plan is not about work. It is about weaponizing redtape to strip healthcare and other critical assistance from tens of millions of Americans.

But you don't have to take my word for it. In Arkansas, the only State that has implemented Medicaid work requirements, one in four adults who were subject to these rules lost their health coverage, despite the fact that 95 percent of all enrollees were already working or qualified for an exemption. Why? How could this happen? It happened because the reporting requirements were so burdensome, so difficult to navigate, that people--particularly, people with disabilities and people with chronic illnesses--couldn't run through the maze.

That meant that more people in Arkansas were forced to ration medication. More had to delay medical care, and more had to take on medical debt. And for the cherry on the top, there is no evidence-- none--that the Arkansas policy increased the rates of employment--which makes sense. If you are not healthy, how are you supposed to work?

Now, Republicans have been down this road before with SNAP and with TANF as well. Indeed, this is where they perfected the redtape scams. Now Republicans are demanding expansions to existing work requirements in SNAP--requirements that we already know kick people out of the program without having any impact on employment.

And after Republicans implemented strict work requirements on TANF families, program participation dropped by nearly 20 percent in just 3 years. Studies show that this redtape increased barriers to employment and led to poorer health outcomes, especially for Black and Brown families. This latest Republican proposal makes the maze of work requirements even more complex.

But, you know, there is one group that profits from making the eligibility maze more complex: private contractors. Private contractors that make their profits by kicking recipients out of the programs or otherwise trapping them in a cycle of poverty. Maximus, for example, has earned $1.7 billion in the last decade administering redtape for more than half of the States, but it has been caught shoving poor Americans into unsustainable poverty-level jobs or even totally unpaid work. And then Maximus gets paid when these workers cycle repeatedly on and off, on and off welfare.

By kicking millions of Americans off Medicaid, SNAP, and TANF, the Republican redtape scam claims to save $120 billion. But keep in mind that the States will be the ones that will be forced to administer all of the redtape and pay the cost for that.

Congressional Republicans are ready to drive our economy off a cliff, and why? To fulfill their dream of erasing America's safety net. Kevin McCarthy is the only one who won't take default off the table.

Democrats, including President Biden, have been clear: These dangerous proposals are not going anywhere. We will not create a redtape maze that has been a complete failure every single time it has been tried.

It is long past time for Republicans to stop playing games and to raise the debt ceiling.

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