Privileges of the Floor
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MURPHY. Will the Senator yield?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MURPHY. Senator Booker, first of all, I want to express my gratitude to you for recognizing the gravity of this moment. Your ability to see that we are facing a series of threats that are not normal--a series of threats to families, to children, to individuals, threats to our democracy, threats to our rule of law--I think it is really important.
And you have endeavored to do something extraordinary here, to stand on your feet for as long as you can to convey both to our colleagues and to the public that because these are not normal times, what is required of us is something different than a normal response.
And I know maybe we have extended the amount of time that you had planned to talk on this particular topic of the threat to Americans' healthcare, but I don't know that there is anything more important that we are talking about today in the U.S. Senate because the scope of what Republicans are talking about here is absolutely extraordinary.
And I want to lay out for you, you know, a few additional facts and numbers and ask you to respond to them as you wrap up your time talking about this particular topic.
But let me just underscore what you have laid out very well. We are talking about nearly $900 billion worth of cuts to Medicaid in order to pay for about a trillion dollars' worth of tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.
There will be table scraps in the Republican bill for middle-class consumers and families, but the bulk of the tax cuts are going to the very, very wealthy--millionaires and billionaires; frankly, people who have done tremendously well in this country over the past several decades, who are not in need of more.
And so you were very right to point out the immorality of the 2017 attempt to cut the Affordable Care Act, which insured 20 million Americans. But Medicaid covers 70 to 80 million Americans, and the new wrinkle is that this proposal doesn't just cut healthcare for tens of millions of Americans; estimates are that it could be 30 million Americans that lose healthcare under the Republican proposal.
No, this is even more difficult to swallow for the American public than the 2017 attempt to cut and eliminate the Affordable Care Act because this measure is a direct transfer of money from the poor, the middle class, the people who are on Medicaid to the very, very wealthy.
Frankly, it could turn out to be the biggest transfer of wealth in the history of the country from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy, which is why, I think, you are taking this extraordinary step to make sure that our colleagues and the American people know the gravity of this moment.
A lot of Republicans all across the country are not doing townhalls any longer; they are not meeting in person with their constituents. And so there are a lot of Americans that are going to be in the dark that have a lot of questions, have a lot of questions about what is happening here, about why it is necessary to cut a program like Medicaid--that insures 24 percent of Americans--to the bone in order to finance a tax cut for the very, very wealthy.
One of the things I just wanted to set up for you here is, you know, just to note that Americans may be surprised to know that 24 percent of Americans are actually on Medicaid today, because some Americans may say: Well, my insurance isn't Medicaid. My insurance is through MississippiCAN. My insurance is through ACCESSNebraska. My insurance is through Centennial Care. Or in Connecticut, my insurance is through HUSKY Health. In New Jersey, it is New Jersey Family Care, right? So Medicaid normally isn't called Medicaid; it is called something different in every State.
So it is important for you to understand that so many of your neighbors are on Medicaid even though it may not be called Medicaid in your State. That is how we get to 24 percent of American families on this particular program.
The Joint Economic Committee, which is a committee of Congress, did a study, issued a report, talking about how many people would lose their healthcare insurance on a State-by-State basis if this $880 billion cut to Medicaid went through. I won't go through the whole list, Senator Booker, but I just pulled out some States that are represented by our Republican colleagues.
In Alabama, 20 percent of Alabamans are on their Medicaid Program. In total, 330,000 people in one State--Alabama--would lose their healthcare if this cut went through.
In Arkansas, 25 percent of families are on the Arkansas Medicaid Program. A quarter of a million people would lose their health insurance.
In Florida, 17 percent of the State is on Medicaid, and 1.3 million Floridians could lose their healthcare because of these Medicaid cuts.
We can just go on and on. Twenty percent of Iowans are on the Medicaid Program, 20 percent of Indiana residents, and 25 percent of Kentucky residents. Thirty percent of Louisianans are on their State's Medicaid Program, and 500,000 residents of Louisiana could lose their healthcare.
Some of that would happen in a sort of slow-moving catastrophe, but, as you pointed out, Senator Booker, a lot of that would happen immediately because many of the States that have taken advantage of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion have a built-in clause to their State's law that says that the minute the reimbursement rate declines, even if it declines by only a few percentage points, the entirety of the Medicaid expansion program is eliminated. So, overnight, you will have millions of people who would lose their healthcare insurance.
But, as you have rightly pointed out, that is just the beginning of the disaster because there are hundreds of rural hospitals in this country that are right now living on the brink of disaster. If Medicaid reimbursements drop by just 5 or 10 percent, those rural hospitals are out of business. The same can be said of thousands of drug treatment centers in this country, addiction treatment centers. So you are ultimately talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of hospitals and health centers closing and millions of Americans losing their healthcare insurance. And for what? And for what? To be able to hoard a bunch of money so that the richest Americans can buy a third vacation home? So that millionaires can double their landscaping budget? Who is asking for this in America today?
Of course there is a conversation to be had about efficiency in our healthcare programs, but none of that conversation is happening here. If it was, you wouldn't be reading the letters of all of these associations representing healthcare groups predicting disaster; they would actually be in the room at the table. If you really wanted to save money, you would actually put the doctors and the hospitals and the medical providers who know something about the system in a room, but instead this is a political decision that has been made to cut a certain amount of money that does not coincidentally line up to the amount of money that the Republican budget bill wants to give in tax cuts to the very, very wealthy.
So you, I think, rightly put emphasis on and drew attention to John McCain's decision--and, of course, we should always give credit to Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, who also voted no in 2017 on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act bill--because it is just a reminder that you are under no obligation as a U.S. Senator to do the wrong thing if you know what the right thing is.
You work so hard to get this job, spend your entire life working to become somebody who can make important decisions like we can in the U.S. Senate, and you are under no obligation to outsource your decision making to the President of the United States or your party leadership. Everybody here gets to make an independent decision on what is right or wrong, and this just feels plain wrong--a thoughtless, unplanned, massive cut in Medicaid that is going to throw millions of people off their healthcare in order to finance a tax cut, the majority of which is going to go to people who don't need it. Every Senator here can make up their own mind as to whether that is the right thing or the wrong thing to do for this country.
The exercise that you are engaged in, Senator Booker, is a simple one: just trying to make sure that all the facts are on the table.
That last segment you did on the impact on medical research should be reason alone for folks to reconsider the path this administration is taking. But the Medicaid cuts as a mechanism to further enrich those that are already plenty rich--man, I just don't imagine that is anything the American public are clamoring for.
So, Senator Booker, I just wanted to really thank you for standing up and making this moment possible. I want to leave you with just two stories on this topic that have come into my office and then ask you a question. This is all lead-up to a question.
So I have a constituent who was paralyzed about a decade ago, and he now uses a wheelchair, and the only insurance program that can provide him with what he needs from a mechanical and technological standpoint, plus the drugs he needs to survive, is Medicaid. It is his only option. It is his only option. He can't work. He is paralyzed. Medicaid is his only option. For him and for millions of others, Medicaid is life or death. It is just life or death.
If you are talking about cutting Medicaid by as much as 20 percent-- that is what we are talking about here today. An $880 billion cut in Medicaid represents about 10 percent of the overall program, but you have to assume that States are not going to continue to match if the Federal Government isn't putting in their share. So that 10-percent cut could very quickly become something closer to a 20-percent cut. There is no way that you can cut the Medicaid Program by 20 percent without it impacting people like my constituent in a wheelchair who comes to many of my events when we protest these Medicaid cuts. This is life or death for many Americans.
But that is not the full extent of the horror that will happen. I was just reading a letter the other day from an 80-year-old constituent of mine who lives at home with his wife, but his wife is very frail, and it is Medicaid and Connecticut's Medicaid waiver that allow for her to receive in-home healthcare services.
He is panicked. He wants to spend the final years of his life with his wife. He knows that if Medicaid gets cut even on the margins, that Medicaid waiver likely is gone, and either his wife will pass or she will have to be in an institution.
Query whether that institution will even be able to give her a place because two-thirds of nursing home beds in this country are paid for by Medicaid.
So one way or the other, he is staring separation from his wife in the eye. She either doesn't make it without the Medicaid reimbursement that gives her the services at home or she is forced to go to an institution, and they live separately for their final days.
This is the reality facing people who rely on Medicaid, whether you are disabled or elderly. This is the reality that will be imposed on millions of Americans in order to finance a tax cut for the wealthy.
The scope of this is just enormous, Senator Booker. So I guess this is the question I wanted to ask you. You and I have been in government for a long time. We have served in a variety of different capacities.
I don't think this country is really ready for the scope of the healthcare cataclysm that could come with a trillion-dollar cut to the health insurance program that is responsible for the care of one- quarter of Americans, two-thirds of nursing home beds, and the budgets of literally tens of thousands of vital healthcare institutions in this country.
Nobody is better than you at conveying the moral consequences of the decisions we make here. Just share with us for a minute, as you sort of wrap up a conversation on this topic of the healthcare priorities of the Trump administration and the Republican Congress, what America may look like in a world where we have decided to gut the health insurance program of last resort for the most vulnerable Americans and the health insurance program that insures 24 million Americans, two-thirds of whom are working for a living. Just give us a little bit of a sense of the enormity of the consequence that this ultimately would bring to this country.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MURPHY. I did.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MURPHY. Will the Senator yield?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MURPHY. There is so much similarity between the debate that you are forcing this Senate to have tonight and the debate that we were having back in 2016 on this epidemic of gun violence. I would describe it this way. The only thing that matters, the thing that matters more than anything else in your life is protecting your loved ones from physical harm.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MURPHY. You would give anything, right? Anything. You would give your life savings, your house. You would perhaps give your own life in order to protect your child or your brother or sister or mother or father from physical harm. So when you and I have sat across from the victims of gun violence, many of whom live in your neighborhood and my neighborhood, in Newark and Hartford, we are looking at a kind of desperation and sorrow that is unique--that is unique that also comes with not just losing a loved one to gun violence but feeling powerless in that exercise.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. MURPHY. Feeling like there was nothing you could do and watching your elected leader stand by and allow for this reality to continue to occur in your neighborhood, where kids are being shot down in cold blood and your elected leaders--the adults in charge of your community--are standing idly by.
That is not fundamentally different than the reality that will be visited upon millions of families if this size of a cut in Medicaid funding goes into effect because families out there who rely on Medicaid to keep alive their son or daughter who has a complicated medical disease have no other quarter, have no other last resort besides Medicaid. Medicaid stands between life and death for their son or daughter. There is no other place for them to go.
So that same empty, hollow look that we have seen so many times in the eyes of a mother or father who lost a son or daughter to gun violence, that is the look that we are choosing to visit upon millions of families in this country who, when faced with the loss of their only health insurance option for their disabled child, will watch their child potentially face the same fate as those young men in your neighborhood and my neighborhood.
That is the reason why I pose this question to you that you are answering about the moral gravity of this moment because it is not fundamentally different than the one that brought us here in 2016.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source