Gop Tax Scam Hurts Everyone

Floor Speech

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Ms. MORRISON. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Schrier for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today alongside my colleagues in the Democratic Doctors Caucus and as the first and only pro-choice OB/GYN here in Congress to speak out against the Republicans' disastrous budget proposal and to fight for our women, children, and families.

For more than 20 years, I have had the honor and privilege of taking care of OB/GYN. One of the great joys of my job is caring for my patients during their pregnancies and helping them grow their families. I carry my patients and their stories with me, and they inform my work here in Congress.

I think about them and all of the challenges that new parents face during pregnancy and then after they head home with their new baby: recovering from the delivery, adjusting to life with a little one, accessing the care they and their family need, balancing caregiving and work, making ends meet, and the cost of raising children in the United States. It is a lot.

I think about all of the babies I have delivered whose moms got their healthcare through Medicaid and how critical that was to help them get off to the best possible start.

It is because of those patients and patients all across the country that I stand here today both incredulous and outraged that the Republican majority in Congress is shoving a budget through that will gut Medicaid, the very health insurance program that covers 40 percent of all births and insures almost half of all children in our country. As an OB/GYN, as a mother, as a Member of Congress, and as an American, this is unconscionable to me. We already have a maternal health crisis in our country.

Let's look at the facts about that maternal healthcare crisis that we face now and remember that this is before we gut Medicaid. In more than half of our country, women do not have a place to go to get obstetric care. Among our peer nations, the United States has the highest rate of both maternal and infant deaths.

In 2022, there were more than double and sometimes triple the rate of maternal deaths in the United States compared to most other high-income countries, and unacceptable disparities exist. Black, American-Indian, and Alaska-Native women are three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause compared to White women. Most of these deaths, more than 80 percent, are preventable.

What is the Republican majority doing to address this unacceptable crisis? Instead of working to find ways to improve women's health and to help moms and babies, they are shoving a budget through that will devastate our Nation's maternal healthcare and decimate many of our hospitals and clinics. It will unequivocally make our Nation's maternal health crisis worse.

Why in the world are they doing this? Why are they choosing to harm women and children? They are doing it to pay for tax cuts for the ultrawealthiest among us. That is literally why. To make the math work to cut taxes for billionaires, they are choosing to sell out the health of women, moms, new babies, and the future of our country to pay for tax cuts for billionaires, choosing to take healthcare away from moms and their babies.

Let's be clear. This won't just be devastating to the moms and new babies who get their healthcare coverage through Medicaid. It will be devastating for maternal healthcare across the country. All of this is coming from the party that calls itself pro-life and profamily. It is hard to imagine a more antifamily policy.

Instead of wasting time musing around ridiculous ways to persuade women to have more children, like giving medals for having six or more babies, I would remind my Republican colleagues that they could start with something real, meaningful, and impactful right now by not gutting the health insurance program that covers almost half of all births and half of all children in our country. The Republican majority needs to make their profamily rhetoric match their policy, put America's moms and babies first, and stop these proposed cuts to Medicaid.

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