Defending Medicaid for Families Like the Currans

Floor Speech

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Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, in this Chamber, as early as today, we may be passing legislation that is explicitly designed to maintain historically low tax rates on the Nation's wealthiest people.

The richest people in America will be served by this institution so that they can pay the lowest tax amounts possible. The corporations in this country must have their record-low tax rates maintained.

The problem is this comes with a cost, and that cost will be paid, as the Republicans have laid it out for us to see, by the Medicaid program and by the addition of trillions of dollars to the United States debt.

Let's talk for a second about Medicaid because it serves about 80 million Americans. Not all Americans have experience with it, but an awful lot do. We are told, and the fantasy is, that the money can be saved by identifying waste, fraud, and abuse.

Make no mistake, that is a fantasy. If you are rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, you hire more people, investigators, and auditors to go after it. We are doing the exact opposite. Elon Musk and DOGE are firing the people who go after waste, fraud, and abuse.

It turns out that people don't wear signs around their necks saying: ``I am committing waste, fraud, and abuse.'' No, it is hard to identify this stuff. It exists, but it does not exist in any conceivable number that the Republicans are talking about cutting out of the Medicaid program.

That number is almost $100 billion a year, $100 billion out of roughly $600 billion in spending. Mind you, that is not trimming. That is taking a wheel off the car.

Here is what is going to happen. As I said, Medicaid covers 80 million Americans with health insurance. It also provides the funding that allows grandma to stay in an assisted living facility after she has run out of assets.

What I really want to do is tell you about Conner Curran. Conner is a 14-year-old from the town of Ridgefield, which I have the honor of representing. His mom is a teacher. His dad works for a local municipality. These are wonderful, middle-class folks just like anyone else in this country.

The problem is that 10 years ago, when he was 4 years old, Conner was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Duchenne muscular dystrophy is a terrible disease. Your muscles waste away, including your heart and your lung muscles. As a consequence, people who have this terrible diagnosis tend to live between 20 and 30 years. Conner is 14.

Lately, because of breakthrough research, some people diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy are living into their forties and fifties.

You might imagine what the Curran family felt when those research programs were devastated by Elon Musk and DOGE. Imagine that.

The real threat to Conner is what is going to happen in this Chamber this week as they find a way to slash Medicaid.

Conner's medicines, the medicines that have kept him alive, cost thousands of dollars a month. A middle-class family can't pay that. Medicaid does.

His lung function is compromised, so he needs a $12,000 machine to breathe. He needs help in school. He wants to go to college, but he needs a little help because he is severely handicapped by this terrible disease.

Conner comes to my office almost every year to tell me about his aspirations and to beg that we keep funding not just the research that may provide him with a normal lifespan but those things that give him a reasonable quality of life, a shot of achieving that dream of going to college.

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues are not voting on numbers this week, although there are billions involved. My colleagues are certainly not voting on waste, fraud, or abuse. Let's leave that fantasy behind. My colleagues are voting this week on what kind of future, if any, Conner can expect and what kind of future, if any, 80 million Americans who rely on Medicaid will have.

My colleagues must take seriously the pain that is about to be caused to some of the most vulnerable Americans out there as they think about their vote, as they think about what they are trying to achieve, as they think about what they aspire this country to be.

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