Advocating Against Medicaid Cuts

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. AUCHINCLOSS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to advocate against the funding cuts to the Medicaid program that have been proposed for consideration during the budget reconciliation process.

Specifically, the Energy and Commerce Committee, of which I am a member, has been tasked with cutting $880 billion of Federal spending across the healthcare programs it oversees, a vast majority of which supports Medicaid.

Cutting this program will be used in service of tax cuts for people who don't need tax cuts and will be devastating to children and families who do need the healthcare.

Mr. Speaker, as we discuss cuts to this program, we must not forget the people behind these budgetary numbers. As such, I will highlight one Massachusetts family today. I will be reading a poem entitled, ``The Mathematics of Mercy.'' It was written by Betsy Johnson. Betsy is an autism educator with the ARC of Massachusetts and a mother of two young adult children with autism and other intellectual disabilities. They rely on Medicaid.

She shared this poem with me to highlight the importance of Medicaid with her family and all families who care for their loved ones with disabilities. It speaks more powerfully than any amount of budgetary debate. ``The Mathematics of Mercy'': A direct care worker holds Someone's universe for $16 an hour, Lifts world, bathes dignity back into being Her hands trembling now As she reads the letter Saying her client's hours are cut, Knowing some bodies can't survive On spreadsheet logic. They speak of cuts in marble rooms, Voices that have never whispered, ``Your therapy is never medically necessary'' To a nonverbal child Who just learned to make sounds Like morning birds. In living rooms turned sacred spaces, Therapists pack up their tools of possibility-- Weighted vests, sensory brushes, Piece of someone's future Now deemed too expensive By men who've never seen How a body learns to trust itself One careful touch at a time. Listen to power chairs going still, To screens falling dark in throats That borrow them for voice, To support workers saying goodbye To people who stopped being clients Somewhere between the first smile And the last hug, While offshore accounts grow fat On the mathematics of suffering. This is how a nation bleeds: Not on battlefields but in group homes, Not from enemy fire but from funding gaps, Where independence becomes too expensive, Where institution beds cost less Than community care. In the halls of power, They call this fiscal responsibility As if responsibility means Telling a mother her daughter Can no longer see the therapist Who taught her how to speak, As if America means Pricing dignity like a luxury good. Every denial letter bears A signature of someone Who has never watched a child Take their first steps at 12, Never seen the light in eyes When words finally come, Never felt the weight Of a family's hopes Balanced against The coldness of cost. Yet in these rooms where care persists, Where love defies their calculations, We piece together what they tear apart Like a quilt of borrowed time, With midnight shifts and morning prayers, Hands that hold when budgets say let go. Here, in this web of grace we weave, Because what flows through us is stronger Than their ledgers and our stubborn refusal To let spreadsheets tell us what a life is worth.

Again, this comes from Betsy Johnson, an autism educator with the ARC of Massachusetts.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source