Budget
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, yesterday, Republicans released the text of their plan to eviscerate Medicaid while cutting taxes for the ultrarich. The bill is as toxic as we all feared.
With a straight face, Republicans are telling the American people that they want to cut taxes for the ultrarich by trillions of dollars and pay for it with the biggest cuts to Medicaid ever--the biggest cuts to Medicaid ever. If this bill becomes law, nearly 14 million Americans will lose their health insurance--again, the biggest cut to Medicaid in American history, 14 million losing their health insurance.
Hospital after hospital will have to lay off tens of thousands of workers. Many of them may be forced to close, particularly in rural areas.
Republicans promised for months they would protect Medicaid, but now Americans know the truth: Republicans never intended to keep that promise, and this confirms it.
Almost 14 million Americans lose insurance. Millions more see their premiums go up. Hospitals from one end of America to the other will close. Thousands will lose their jobs. Millions will lose their access to healthcare. Kids will suffer. Seniors suffer. Healthcare workers will lose their jobs. Americans with disabilities get hurt. And rural Americans are left to fend for themselves.
Hospitals and nursing homes will shutter. States will scramble with their budgets. And American families are left out to dry.
And why? Tax cuts for the billionaires. That is what happens when Project 2025 takes over the Republican mainstream.
But the cruelness doesn't stop there. Later today, we also expect Republicans to unveil their plan to cut SNAP, which feeds about 40 million Americans in need. If the reports are to be believed, Republicans plan to cut Federal food assistance by hundreds of billions. If the reports are to be believed, that is what the Republicans plan to do.
Kids will go hungry. Parents will suffer.
I just got back from Buffalo and Albany in Upstate New York, meeting with food banks and religious leaders and church leaders who are on the frontlines of the fight against hunger. The priests and nuns I met with spoke of the obligation Scripture imparts on us to feed the hungry and to give drink to the thirsty. But right now, Republicans want to rob the least of our neighbors to make it better for those at the top.
SNAP should not be a partisan issue. It should not be a political issue. It is a moral question: Are we going to let kids, veterans, senior citizens, and others go hungry? This is about taking care of the most vulnerable in society, especially the children, making sure every child in America is afforded basic dignity.
If a kid goes to bed hungry, they can't learn the next morning in school. They can't get along with their friends. They are off to an awful start.
So SNAP has been one of the great things that America has done until now, in a bipartisan way--but not with these MAGA people running the show and not with the Republicans here in the Senate and in the House being supine to what they know is wrong and vicious and mean and counterproductive.
I urge House Republicans to oppose these devastating cuts to SNAP, particularly those New York Republicans whose constituents I have met over the past couple of weeks. I was in or near the districts of two of them today, and the outrage against what they might do is palpable.
Given the narrow margins in the House, these swing districts in New York have the power to stop these cuts to SNAP. These Republicans can do it. They can make sure no kid goes to bed hungry. I urge them to stand up and hold the line.
When you put it all together, there is no other way to put it: This bill is a grotesque betrayal of working and middle-class families.
And a few moments ago, Republicans released the next phase of their plan: hiking taxes on electricity and raising energy costs for seniors and families. Republicans are so captured by the hard-right ideology that they are willing to cede America's energy future to China and tank domestic industries that we will need to keep energy costs low in the future.
Not a single Senate Democrat will support this destructive piece of legislation. Instead of calling this ``one, big, beautiful bill,'' Republicans should tell the truth. This bill is a big, fat grift, and it is the American people who are getting ripped off.
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