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Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2025

Floor Speech

Date: Feb. 25, 2025
Location: Washington, DC

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Ms. PLASKETT. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to this budget. We know that a budget is a statement of values. In simple terms, you put your money where your mouth is. The money my Republican colleagues are getting right now is going to the class that they are beholden to, the uberwealthy.

The bulk of those cost savings come from slashing Medicaid funding, which ensures that 70 million Americans, and funds from the Children's Health Insurance Program, CHIP, where another 10 million American children are helped. Those savings they are getting are being created so that they can then give that money, give those savings, to the ultrarich.

Twenty percent of the population in the Virgin Islands are at risk of losing their healthcare under this budget. Veterans, children, working families who are barely making it, rely on this.

Mr. Chair, right here, right now, Republicans are trying to steal healthcare from 80 million people, and they are heading to the bank as millions of Americans are left helpless. What is happening? What is going on?

Republicans are intentionally targeting grandmothers, targeting children, and targeting veterans that live in your neighborhood. Mr. Chair, they are going to throw some peanuts, a couple of hundred bucks, at each one of us and tell us that you are getting some taxes back. That is the amount of money that the very wealthy are getting. An average of $314,000 is going to them at the expense of the American people.

Speaking of fraud, waste, and abuse, they are going to tell you they are using that money to get rid of illegals. They are going to tell you that they are going to try and dramatically change the landscape. No. They are only changing the landscape for those individuals that they are beholden to--$2 trillion of cuts for $4 trillion of money that is going into the pockets of individuals that they are beholden to. That is what is happening. I am disappointed, but I am not surprised that the Republicans have used this process to satisfy the people that they are most beholden to. Americans must stand up.

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