Big, Backstabbing Bill

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAMLAGER-DOVE. Mr. Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today to co-anchor this Congressional Black Caucus Special Order hour, along with my distinguished colleague from the great State of Ohio, Representative Shontel Brown, who hopefully will be joining us.

Along with some of our other colleagues, she is in her committee hearing, trying to figure out if Republicans will stand up with the American people and vote down so many of the disastrous proposals that are being brought up in these various committees as it relates to the reconciliation bill.

Mr. Speaker, for the next 60 minutes, members of the CBC have an opportunity to speak directly to the American people and directly to you on the Republicans' disastrous reconciliation package. This is an issue of great importance, of utmost importance, and of perilous importance, not just to the Congressional Black Caucus but to everyone.

Hopefully, Republican Members, not just Democratic Members of Congress, will stand up with and for the American people and vote down some of this nonsense that is going to be coming before all of us in our committees. At the very least, let's not be silent. That is why the Congressional Black Caucus is here tonight.

Mr. Speaker, House Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee just released text. This is the one big, beautiful bill. This is the 386- page manifesto that killed trees and trees.

Mr. Speaker, I have to tell you that there are only two words in that phrase that are accurate. This is a bill, and it is big, but it is not beautiful. It is a backstabbing bill because all the items in the 386 pages of this bill are about how this administration is going to backstab the American people. It is not going to feel good.

Unlike the O'Jays song ``Backstabbers,'' this doesn't have a good melody.

This is about cutting Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and benefits for veterans. This is about killing young people, seniors, and those who are disabled. This is about cutting important critical services for the American people to give tax credits to billionaires. There are a lot of B's in this statement. None of them are very good.

Let me be very clear: Republicans have barely made any attempts to support working families. Instead, they have written an economic love letter to people like Elon Musk. This is a 386-page love letter to Elon Musk.

Republicans can run from the truth all they want--they have been silent--but the truth is in the eyes of this administration: Americans don't need healthcare, but this administration somehow needs a $400 million plane gifted to them from the Saudi Government. Americans don't need SNAP assistance, but this administration and all of his billionaire buddies need millions in tax writeoffs.

Mr. Speaker, how are my constituents supposed to live? How are your constituents supposed to live? How are any of our constituents supposed to pull themselves up by those ridiculous bootstraps that people like to talk about?

This administration and the House majority are actually not just taking away their boots but taking away the leather, the rubber, the soles, and the labor that would be used to even make these boots. We are going to be spending the next hour talking about all of that.

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Ms. KAMLAGER-DOVE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from the great State of Maryland (Mr. Ivey) for keeping it real and really underscoring the challenges that are in front of us as Americans and for really articulating why courage, backbone, and just basic common sense are so needed right now in these perilous times.

Why are these times perilous?

These times are perilous because in Congress we are in the process of debating and trying to pass this reconciliation bill.

People might be saying: Well, what is it?

It isn't actually a budget. In each of the committees, discussions are had about where to spend and where to cut. This House majority has been given marching orders, and the marching orders are to cut as much as possible and to cut until the American people bleed. The only folks who will be able to afford Band-Aids to prevent them from bleeding to death will be the richest of the rich.

Everyone else, you will have to fend for yourself. In each of these committees in which we sit, on which we sit, we are debating cuts that will hurt this economy, that will hurt constituents, that will hurt American businesses, that will hurt our standing in the world.

This is not a red or blue discussion. This is not even a Black Caucus or other caucus discussion. This is about what is at risk, who is at danger, who is being put at risk by this administration and, quite frankly, by the silence coming from this House majority.

Tonight and later on this week, Ag, Energy and Commerce, and the Ways and Means Committees are meeting, and they have been meeting earlier today, and they are also continuing to meet right now.

The challenge is meeting this late in the evening allows them to do dirty business, allows them to vote on bills and amendments that will hurt the American people without the benefit of having the news being able to report on it before people go to bed. It is almost like these dirty deeds will be happening at night when no one can see or hear what is going on.

Maybe we are spending our time talking about this $400 million bribe that was just given to this administration when we should be talking about all of the cuts that are going to be coming from these committees.

With reconciliation, Republicans want all the cuts, but they do not want the political consequences. That is why we are here tonight talking about what those consequences will be, talking about what is in these reconciliation bills, what is in this package, because we don't want anyone to get political amnesia.

We don't want anyone to forget when they are hurting, when they are trying to pay a bill, when they are trying to get gas, when they are trying to buy eggs, when they are trying to buy a home, when they are looking for a job, when they are trying to bury a loved one, why it is so hard to do any of those things, why the costs are so high.

We are going to continue to remind the American people why all of those costs are going to be so high, and it is because of the cuts that are coming in this reconciliation bill, cuts that Republicans could have stopped, but they have been too silent.

Last week we were here, and we had hearings in the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Committee on the Judiciary, Committee on Small Business, Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Committee on Natural Resources, in those committees and in others.

I don't know if many of these discussions or outcomes from these committees have made it into the news cycle, so folks don't know what really happened in those committees. I am going to say, in those committees we talked about cutting State Department by close to 50 percent, terminating workers in the State Department, finalizing the shuttering of USAID.

People might say, well, what is USAID? Well, part of what USAID does is contract with American farmers. Farmers have contracts with USAID. USAID buys their product and then uses it. All of those contracts have stopped because Republicans are looking for ways to fill the gap, the big gap, the chasm that has been made by these tax cuts going to billionaires.

They have done so much at the State Department that they have even fired the people who are responsible for purchasing the tickets to bring Americans home from all of their missions around the world. You have Americans who are stuck in countries around the world separated from their families, unable to get home because the ticket agency in the State Department has been shut down.

In the Committee on the Judiciary, we talked about billions of dollars going to ICE for bonuses to buy computers and cars and deporting Americans and allowing January 6ers to be hired to work for the Federal Government, people who came in here trying to bludgeon the Capitol Police and the people who work in this very institution.

In that committee, Republicans voted to allow them to work for the Federal Government and have the authority to go after other Americans.

In the Committee on Natural Resources, they passed a bill that would allow us to sell Federal land, land that we all enjoy, parks, recreational services, and forests.

I want the people in my life, the little people in my world to be able to go and visit a natural reserve or to go to one of our national parks and monuments and see that it is still owned by the United States, that we haven't sold it to some corporation or, God forbid, some other country, someone with the highest bid.

We are selling that land, and the proceeds are going into the coffers because, remember, we have to cover the $4.5 trillion gap that House Republicans made because they want to give tax cuts to the wealthiest of the wealthy.

What else does that mean? It means that Republicans plan to cut $900 billion to Medicaid, kicking 8.7 million people off of Medicaid over the next 10 years. The plan calls for new requirements for beneficiaries, for those who are on Medicaid, work requirements.

Some say: Well, I don't have a problem with people going to work. They are also saying: We want seniors, we want folks who are disabled, we want the elderly, we want those folks to be schlepping down the street trying to find a job in this market, of course, when it is actually hard to find employment.

They have been saying: Well, you can make these cuts because there are not even that many people on Medicaid. There are these people who are 150 years old or 130 years old or they have been dead for 4 years, and they are on Medicaid. Well, the reality is that so many of us have constituents who are dependent on Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security that are going to be devastated because of these cuts.

In California, there are 470,000 people on Medicaid, and they are going to be at risk of losing their care because of what the Republican budget plans to do. This is 140,000 children under the age of 19 and 40,000 seniors over the age of 65 just in my district.

I am going to say it again. My district has the 4th highest Medicaid enrollee numbers in the country. California has 7 of the 10th highest Medicaid enrollee districts. There are poor people, there are struggling people everywhere in every district in every state who need Medicaid, who need Medicare, who need Social Security.

I just have to say: If Republicans are so enamored with this big, beautiful, backstabbing bill and believe it to be the manna from heaven, then they shouldn't be afraid to go into their districts and talk about the cuts, talk about cutting Medicaid.

Look at the person in the wheelchair, look at the person who is dependent on Social Security benefits, look at the veteran who is receiving Social Security, and tell them that they don't matter. Tell them that their benefit is not as important as giving the money to Elon Musk and the billionaires. You tell them that.

If you are not telling them to their face, you are certainly going to be telling them that when you vote for this reconciliation bill.

Let's talk about education. DOGE and Musk, under the authority of this administration, have already fired half of the staff in the Department of Education. I don't know about you, but I have young people in my family who are excited about going to college, and they are also scared because they don't even know if the colleges are going to stay open.

I am not just talking about elite Ivy League institutions. I am talking about community colleges; I am talking about state colleges. I am talking about legacy institutions where parents and grandparents went to, and it means something to be able to get into that school and graduate.

I have talked to young people who don't know if there will be any money for them if they get in, even with the grades. I have talked to young people who are getting ready to graduate and don't know if there will be a job for them. And I have talked to young people who were excited about representing this country and helping us be more competitive and now don't even know if this country is for them.

News flash, all of these young people who I have been talking to are U.S. citizens, American-born, who don't even know if there is going to be a country left, who don't even know if there will be educational institutions left because this proposal includes $330 billion in cuts that will impact Pell grants, Head Start, school lunches, and more.

We are talking about a $1 billion freeze for school-based mental health. I don't know about you, but it seems like every single person in this country should be accessing mental health services right now just to make it through the day.

That is what is coming out of this reconciliation package.

Going back to student loan borrowers who saw a glimmer of hope last year, and now they are going to be tracked down like animals in the night when you have an administration that just accepted a $400 million bribe from another country. The math doesn't math up.

Why are you asking for young people to pay their fair share when it seems like not everyone else is doing the same thing? The regional Head Start office serving my district closed, and Head Start funding at roughly $12 billion annually represents less than .2 percent of total Federal spending.

Eliminating Head Start would cut childcare and supportive services for about 80,000 young children in California.

Then let's talk about ag. This proposal would halt funding for the Rural Energy for America Program. Once again, cutting a billion dollars in funding for programs that help schools and feed folks through food banks. Cutting this funding would threaten the livelihood of our American farmers and also threaten the nutrition of our children.

Let's talk about our veterans. Under this reconciliation package proposal, we are talking about firing 6,000 veterans. My God. My God. People who have served our country in wars, who have stood up for this country and the people in it, who have stood up for our Constitution, who came back from their service and were hired by the government will be fired, have been fired, are being fired.

Not only are we talking about firing 6,000 veterans, but we are also talking about cutting their services, cutting their medical services, forcing longer wait times for them because when they call, when they go to the VA to get help, there will be fewer people there to help them.

I think about the veterans in my district that I talk to, and they don't deserve to be mistreated like that.

My God, they want to come back and enter into society and be part of a thriving business, to help open a business, and they still need access to their medical care. They still need access to their mental health support, and we are going to cut that. In my mind, that is just so unchristian.

Then, we are talking about cutting Health and Human Services so that if we are trying to make sure that folks don't get tuberculosis, that we keep measles at bay, that we keep HIV at bay, well, if you are at risk, you are going to be in greater danger because the proposed cuts would be cutting NIH, the National Institutes of Health; CDC, the Centers for Disease Control; and FDA, the Food and Drug Administration--the people who make sure that the food we eat is safe, is not poisonous, won't kill us, and the people who make sure that we get accurate, nonpartisan, truthful information about the diseases and the ailments that are out here in this world so that we have the information that we need to keep ourselves and our children safe and healthy. We are not going to have access to that.

The research that is being done to help us fight against cancer and to cure so many other diseases that are out there, those research programs are going to be compromised. The clinical trials happening are going to be compromised because we have decided this reconciliation package, which is a statement of values, is going to be deciding that those things are not important. It is not important to eat healthy food. It is not important to have access to medicine. It is not important to research, to find cures for diseases and illnesses that have plagued our grandparents, our parents.

Have you gone to a children's hospital? Have you visited a child who is dying from cancer? Would you go to that child and tell them there is a higher probability that you are going to die because we are cutting the grants that would allow us to find a cure? That is what is in this reconciliation package.

Then Social Security, cutting 7,000 employees, you cut so many employees in your thirsty quest to find ways to fill this hole for these tax cuts for the billionaires, but you crashed the Social Security website. You have closed offices. You have told seniors and those with disabilities to figure out a way to get themselves to one of the few offices that are still open, but you are going to have to wait in a longer line because we have fired employees and are actually ending phone services for claims.

Really, it is a very sneaky, shady way of kicking people off of the services because you are constricting access.

I don't know about you, but I don't want to see a bunch of seniors struggling in a car or trying to get on the bus to go to the Social Security office that now has shorter hours and longer lines because they are trying to get a claim that they have earned. Who tells a 75-year-old, a 68-year-old, an 80-year-old grandparent to go suck it--basically, figure out how you are going to survive. We are going to cut all of this from you, but I still want to visit you on Easter. I don't know what people say. I don't know how the hypocrisy formula works, but I am not down for cutting access to Social Security, cutting Social Security, and hurting our seniors because we want to give billions more, trillions more, in tax cuts to millionaires.

Let's talk about the arts and cutting funding for the arts, closing down museums, grant programs, and after-school programs that teach young people how to play music, how to play an instrument, and shutting down libraries.

It is so healing when we turn on the radio. We want to go to a concert. We go to an art performance because that is meaningful, regardless of your political party. Everyone deserves an opportunity to enjoy art, to be able to go to a library and have the choice of what book you want to pick out, but you have no choice when they are all shut down. That is what is in this reconciliation package.

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Ms. KAMLAGER-DOVE. Mr. Speaker, I almost lost my train of thought, but it has come back to me because I was talking about the arts.

The gentleman from Maryland was talking about our leadership as a country and how our leadership is in question. I would just like to add that not only is our leadership in question, but our attractiveness as a country is in question. Our competitive edge is in question. Our ability to be seen as forthright and a country of high integrity is in question.

These cuts are hurting our children. They are hurting our grandparents. They are hurting our farmers. They are hurting our small businesses. They are hurting the infrastructure in our States. They are hurting our ports. They are hurting our hospitals. They are hurting our clinics. They are hurting our parks. Honestly, they are hurting our hearts.

I think about that big red, white, and blue flag right behind the Speaker's chair and what that flag represents: opportunity, access, honesty, integrity. What we have seen last week and what we are seeing this week from the House majority when it comes to this reconciliation bill is silence. It is silent on these issues that mean so much to the people in our communities.

I can't tell you how many times I have walked down the street and have had an older person grab me and say, ``What is going to happen to my Social Security?'' Coming here to vote, I had a Capitol Police officer pull me to the side and ask me what it meant for his job, if he would have a job. Going to talk to farmers, I had them tell me that they may have to fire or lay off the rest of their employees, that they would not be able to make it. Small businesses in the community that are hiring other people from the community are concerned.

Everyone asks, ``What are Republicans doing? Why aren't they standing up for us, too?''

I don't have an answer to that question. I want an answer to that question because when you are silent, it means you are complicit or apathetic. I would hope that there would be no one here who would want to be complicit in the taking away of Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare. I would hope that no one here would want to be complicit in having young children with cancer at a children's hospital die because we have cut cancer research funding.

As I say this, I think about my mother, a breast cancer survivor who wonders every day if it will come back. Boy, how do you think it gets me right in the craw to have to tell her that this country doesn't care if she lives or dies because it doesn't care enough about finding a cure for cancer to continue to fund that kind of research?

We just celebrated Mother's Day. I wonder if people shared with their mothers how all the support that helps mothers will now be on the chopping block.

I am sharing all of this on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus because as we wait to see what comes out of the remaining committees that are meeting, just know that there is a $290 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, cutting off food assistance to thousands of families who need it.

Just know that, in these committees, they will be debating raising the age for mandatory work requirements because we want people to work longer and harder and get less while somehow billionaires make more off of the backs of these working families.

Just know that, in these committees, they are going to be talking about cutting access to school lunches. So many of us live in districts where the school district is actually responsible for feeding the children in the community because of the free lunch program.

I know that people might be distracted by the Qatar gift, the $400 million flying palace. Let's hope there are no bugs in it. I don't know. I know people want to be distracted by all the other things that seem to be coming out of the administration, but I don't want us to be distracted by that.

I want us to be talking about this reconciliation bill. I want us to remember what is going to be voted on in this package, and it is a thing. It is a thing that it is actually taking so long for this package to arrive on the floor.

Do you know why it is a thing? Because we have a House majority trying to wiggle through the truth and figure out a way to spin death, destruction, and poverty.

There is no way to spin kicking granny off of Social Security. There is no way to spin shutting down hospitals and clinics. We can demonize the folks who are on Medicaid and Medicare, but I want to also remind us that if there is a doctor, if there is a clinic, if there is a hospital that is receiving a reimbursement for taking care of a recipient on Medicaid, that doctor, that hospital, that community clinic is open to serve you, too, because that reimbursement allows that clinic, that doctor, that hospital to stay open to help and serve everyone else in the community.

A lot of this rhetoric that you are hearing from people who don't want to talk about this reconciliation bill is trying to divide us into ``us'' and ``them'' buckets. The truth is that we are all in this together. We are all in this country together. We are all in this debate together. We are all in this fight together to make sure that the people in our districts have access to the services that they deserve.

If you are not willing to stand up for Medicare--and don't sign a letter and then run and don't show up in a district. Stand up and talk about saving it, protecting it, defending it, and making it better so that it can serve more people who deserve it rather than cutting it and lying about it and running from the truth.

The truth is that this reconciliation bill, this package, is going to hurt people. It is going to impoverish people. It is going to destroy businesses because the funny thing about economies is that they are circular. Nothing happens in a silo, in a vacuum. Businesses stay open because people are able to go into those businesses, and they are able to shop and buy things. When that happens, that business is able to grow, and they are able to hire more workers. Then those workers are able to do more or produce more.

Mr. Speaker, that is how it works. Yet, when you cut off opportunity, access, incentive, and support, then you compromise that ecosystem. We all have those micro-ecosystems in our communities. That is what makes this country strong. That is what makes this country unique. That is what makes this country worthy of this kind of debate.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to close right now because I know the witching hour is among us. I am grateful for the time that has been given to the Congressional Black Caucus. The Speaker has heard from my distinguished colleagues about this reconciliation package and about all issues of great importance to this caucus, to our constituents, to the Congress, and to all Americans tonight.

This reconciliation bill is a big deal. It is important and it should be talked about and discussed. The best disinfectant is sunlight, and we have to stop allowing people to be so shady about what is happening in these committees and what is being cut. We have to turn all the lights on and talk about all of the cuts that are coming in this reconciliation package. Yes, we have to point the fingers and point the blame at the people who plan to make these cuts and kill the American people.

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