Establishing the Congressional Budget for the United States Government for Fiscal Year 2025 and Setting Forth the Appropriate Budgetary Levels for Fiscal Years 2026 Through 2034
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, a few minutes ago, for the second time this year, Senate Republicans began the process to pass legislation eviscerating Medicaid, abandoning our kids, failing our veterans, and squandering our future--all for the sake of tax cuts for the ultrarich. This is the Republican agenda: Billionaires win; American families lose. Billionaires win; American families lose in the Republican plan.
Republicans have failed to be honest with the country about the true nature of their plans. They have tried to hide their Medicaid cuts. They have tried to hide their billionaire tax giveaways with budgetary gimmicks and distractions. They are tying themselves in knots. They don't want the American people to know what their agenda is. Well, if Republicans won't be straight with the American people about their agenda, Senate Democrats are glad to do it for them.
Tonight, my colleagues and I will begin to put the Republican agenda on trial before the court of public opinion here on the floor of the Senate. It is going to be a long few days for Senate Republicans. Democrats will expose the dark corners of the Republican plan. We will explain the devastating consequences, highlight the many injustices that Republicans will inflict on people's healthcare, on their financial security, on their children's futures, and on the very future of the American dream itself.
We begin tonight with a topic close to home for all of us: Medicaid.
It is my honor to join my fellow Democrats to lay the case before the American people for how Republicans plan to destroy Medicaid as we know it and harm millions and millions and millions of Americans. We will share the stories of people back home. We will illustrate the full scale of the destruction these cuts would do. And we will make it clear to the American people that while Republicans work like hell to eliminate Medicaid to cut taxes for the rich, Democrats are fighting to protect the healthcare the American people deserve and need.
Medicaid will be the first--the first--of six different themes that we will focus on here on the floor.
Tomorrow, we will be focused, likewise, as we debate this bill, on Republicans' morally bankrupt tax breaks for billionaires and on Donald Trump's dumb and costly tariffs, on the need to stand up for our veterans and our national security, on the unprecedented corruption Donald Trump has unleashed in our government, and finally on the existential fight to protect Social Security from the chain saw of Elon Musk. These are the themes we will cover today and tomorrow.
This is the fight the American people need to see because people's lives and livelihoods are at stake. The healthcare that protects our kids is in danger--our children. Their healthcare is in danger. The benefits that keep our seniors whole are at risk. Senior citizens, in their golden era, could have Medicaid--the rug--pulled out from under them, leaving them in dire straits. The investments that unlock America's future now stand on the edge of a knife.
Why? Why? Why are Republicans doing this? Why are they being so cruel? so callous? so thoughtless? Why are those in the billionaire bubble who seem to run Donald Trump and Elon Musk--why are they doing this? It is very simple. They are trying to give the ultrarich another tax break. The Republicans are enthralled with these very wealthy, very greedy people, and all they want is a tax break.
When Donald Trump became President, they got control of the Republican Party, and Elon Musk and Donald Trump are in the billionaire bubble. And when Democrats expose all of these cuts to healthcare and veterans' aid and benefits for the American people to see, the American people will think it is sickening.
So, tonight, let us begin with Medicaid.
Seventy million--seventy million--people rely on Medicaid in one way or another to provide medical care, and tens of millions more are their families and friends. That includes not just seniors who are within the 70 million but also newborns, parents, Americans with disabilities, rural communities that have access, perhaps, to a single hospital or clinic if they are fortunate. Medicaid--Medicaid--makes all these things possible.
I want to focus on a truly sobering experience I had earlier this week when visiting two nursing homes in New York: the Silver Lake Specialized Care and Rehab Center on Staten Island and the Carillon Nursing and Rehab Center on Long Island. These institutions alone-- there are just 2 of them--serve over 600 residents together and employ 600 people. They are the lifeline to local communities. They help seniors with dementia, with postsurgical rehab, with physical disability support, and so much more.
My visit to these communities was clouded by a shadow of fear and anger. I talked to senior citizens who knew that if Medicaid were cut, they would lose their healthcare. In fact, the owner of Silver Lake-- one of the most esteemed healthcare facilities on Staten Island--told me that if the cut were even half what the Republicans are proposing, his home would close. Hundreds of senior citizens would have no healthcare, and 300 people would lose their jobs. They were frightened. They were scared. They were angry.
There is no question about it: Even if Republicans pass a fraction of the cuts they are pushing, it will devastate these communities.
We have the heads of major hospitals there--many of them not the same party as mine--telling us what would happen if these devastating cuts to Medicaid went through.
On Staten Island, we estimated 18,000 people would lose their jobs. Tens of thousands would no longer get healthcare. It would cause a recession on Staten Island--like that. Seniors at the centers--new seniors who are getting out of hospitals or have a new illness that they are just encountering--would be turned away. There would be no funding. There would be no beds. There would be no place for them to go.
It is not just the residents at these nursing homes; it is their children who now can breathe easy for their parents who helped raise them and worked so hard through the years to provide for them.
Staten Island is a middle-class community, and so is Long Island--the two places I visited--but their kids would not be able to care for most of them. Most of them need more healthcare than just going back to their kids' homes. It is not adequate healthcare for so many of them. Others said their children had no extra room for them. What are even the kids going to do? On both Staten Island and Long Island, these are middle-class communities. They are going to be devastated by these cuts.
Some of the residents said their children might be able to take care of them, but the burden would be immense. These families don't have the financial means to take care of their parents in their advanced ages. They don't have space at home. They don't have the medical know-how to meet the needs like a nursing home does.
For any of you--of the millions of Americans who have a parent who has struggled with dementia or physical disabilities--to those people, we know that our parents need the help of medical professionals to care for them properly. That is why Medicaid is so vital, so important, such a lifeline to tens of millions of families across America. The Republican Medicaid cuts would be a gut punch to these families.
It was the same story on Long Island. Senior citizens are scared, nervous, angry about what these budget cuts would do to them that the Republicans are proposing, that Trump and Musk are proposing. Workers worried they might lose their jobs--and they have worked so hard in these facilities because they care about the patients they are caring for--are told ``No, no more funding'' for no reason. They are doing a great job.
It is the same on Long Island as on Staten Island, and it is the same across all of America in poor communities, which, of course, depend on Medicaid.
For so many people, Medicaid is their only lifeline to healthcare-- for middle-class communities and even well-to-do communities. All of them are nervous, scared, angry, furious at what these cuts would do to them.
Why? people ask. Why are they doing this? Why are they being so mean? Why are they being so cruel? Why are they being so callous?
We have to answer: For one reason--they want to give billionaires a tax cut. They want to take the money away from working families. They want to take things that working families need. They want to take them away so there are more tax cuts for the billionaires.
It angers me. It is infuriating that something so wrong, so callous, so detrimental to America could be right here on the Senate floor with the support of so many Republican Senators.
I say to the Republican Senators: Listen to your constituents. Listen to your constituents. They don't want this. You know that. Are you going to get up on the floor and make a speech that says you are cutting Medicaid because you want to give tax breaks to billionaires? That is what you are doing. Get up and have the courage to say it. Get up and have the courage to say it.
The senior centers I visited were represented, actually, by Republican Members of Congress on both Staten Island and Long Island.
There, I told every patient, every doctor, every nurse, every employee who works in these institutions to call their Congress Member and tell them that their jobs are at risk and, if they are a resident, to tell them their healthcare is at risk. If they are a child of a parent in one of these nursing homes, call.
I told them to make it clear to their Congressmen that the Republican Congressmen and Senators have the power in their hands to stop these cuts because there are narrow margins in both the Senate and the House.
A handful of Senators and a handful of Congressmen, if they have the courage to do the right thing--and most of them--or some of them, at least, know that it is the right thing even though they are afraid to vote yes--they are afraid to vote no and stop this, but they should have the courage to do it.
So I told them. I told everyone I encountered in these two nursing homes and in many other places in New York.
I went to a hospital in the Bronx--one of the biggest hospitals. It serves 1.3 million people in the Bronx. It is the only cancer care treatment for all of those 1.3 million. The leaders of that hospital told me the hospital would probably close if there were a 20-percent cut to Medicaid, and the Republicans are proposing a deeper cut than that in this budget bill. Close. The only hospital. One of the biggest employers. It employees 18,000 people itself. This story could be repeated. The Bronx has poorer communities. Staten Island and Long Island have more middle-class communities. But every one of them will be affected terribly by these cuts. So I told them to call. I tell everyone: We have to stop this. Public sentiment is everything.
Every American in a similar position to those I spoke to should do the same. Call your Congressman. Call your Senator. Tell them you don't want Medicaid to be slashed. Tell them you don't want nutrition assistance to be eliminated. Tell them you don't want our seniors to be abandoned. Tell them you don't want to see these cuts--these cruel, heartless cuts--just so the wealthiest Americans can get another break they don't need.
That is what the next few days are about: fighting these awful cuts done to help the wealthiest Americans get a tax break. That is the fight Democrats will have here on the Senate floor. That is the fight we will have tonight. That is the fight we will have tomorrow and beyond.
Democrats are fighting every day in every way against these attacks against American families, against this plan, which says billionaires win; families lose.
Democrats stand united. We are unified in fighting this awful bill. We will fight the Republican anti-family agenda. We will shine a light on these terrible cuts that Republicans are trying to pass. The American people will be horrified at what they see.
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