Better is Possible
Floor Speech
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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman McIver for co- anchoring this Special Order hour tonight.
You don't grow up in the Commonwealth of Virginia without getting history lessons, and those lessons stuck with me. I am cognizant that next year we have the opportunity to celebrate 250 years of an extraordinary, revolutionary, radical idea that had never been tried, truly, before in the world: the idea that the power of government derives from the people, not from brute force, not from getting it from an inheritance, but the consent of the governed to give power to the government.
Why do they do that? It is to meet their needs, to solve their problems. It is an idea that sparked my imagination as a child. It is an idea that as I listened to my parents tell stories of what their life was like growing up during the Depression, growing up during Jim Crow, where they didn't always have their needs met, not because of any fault of their own or their parents, but they saw the best of government through the New Deal, where the Federal Government used its power to help people who couldn't afford to put food on the table, to help people who lost their life savings overnight in the stock market crash, but didn't help all the people because at the same time, my parents saw the worst of government, a government that oppresses some for the benefit of a few.
That sparked my imagination again to say what can I do to make government a force for good that helps people and solves problems, rather than oppresses some for the benefit of a few? Eventually, that question led me to Congress.
After growing up as a member of Generation X on ``Schoolhouse Rock,'' learning about just a bill's journey to becoming a law, I got here and thought, they didn't get it right because there is no song for what I have seen since coming to Congress, particularly in the 119th.
We stand here today, 22 days before government funding expires. We stand here, House and Senate Democrats, ready to pass a bipartisan funding bill that will improve the health of Americans, that will improve access to quality, affordable healthcare, that will improve the safety and economic well-being of every American.
As a matter of fact, our leaders sent a letter to Republican leadership in the House and the Senate to that effect. The very next day, the President sent down a pocket rescission that the Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee said was unlawful. I happen to agree.
Most of this Congress, we have watched a President ignore the will of Congress, Mr. Speaker, or we have seen, at the President's request, congressional Republicans cut Medicaid, cut SNAP benefits, put lifetime caps on student loans, Federal student loans, cut funding that Congress appropriated for cancer research, for the National Institutes of Health, a whole host of things. People at home are scratching their heads saying: How does this help me? How does this solve my problem? It creates more.
I spent the August recess mostly in my district, but I spread out a little bit beyond my district because I am one of only two Virginians on the Energy and Commerce Committee. Healthcare, in particular, has been very important to me. I spent time talking to my constituents, and listening, more importantly, to their concerns, what they were worried about, what they were afraid of, and then talking particularly to healthcare providers across the Commonwealth.
What I heard was a lot of anxiety and fear, whether it was my farmers who because of tariff policies aren't seeing the kind of orders-- particularly for soybeans--that they used to see this time of year going overseas. Mr. Speaker, some can't get the parts to repair their equipment because of tariffs. Some businesses have had to raise prices because they have absorbed them for as long as they can. Yet, they are in between a rock and a hard place where if they raise their prices too much, especially the small business owners, they are going to go out of business.
I heard from State legislators who wonder how am I going to fill the hole in my State budget caused by cuts to Medicaid, cuts to SNAP, and the requirements on States to pay more when I am also trying to fill the holes in NIH funding and in all the other healthcare funding that helps me meet the needs of my constituents. How am I going to fill the hole when I am still waiting for the Department of Education to send money that was appropriated as schools are about to start.
What my State legislators and my local elected officials told me was--I keep hearing people say about how this big, ugly bill is a tax cut, but what it is doing to me is forcing me to either cut services or raise taxes at the State or at the local level.
Congress has 22 days for Republicans to decide whether we are going to have a government shutdown because they have made clear from day one that they are in charge. They have made clear from day one that the President can just decide not to spend money we have appropriated, and that is okay. They have made clear that they can pass reconciliation bills without giving us a seat at the table. It is up to them whether Congress will pass funding that meets people's needs and solves their problems and keeps the government open or not.
I am usually the eternal optimist. I am a little worried. I am a little worried. Virginia has the second highest number of Federal employees, and since the cuts to the Federal workforce have now seen unemployment increase multiple times before the folks that were paid to stay home until September 30 come off the job rolls, those people are not able to find jobs. Mr. Speaker, unlike what our Governor says: Just because you are a NASA engineer, doesn't mean that you are qualified for the healthcare jobs that our healthcare providers can't fill. The big, ugly bill is going to make all of those issues worse.
I want to share some of what I heard from our healthcare providers. You have the academic research hospitals who are worried they can't attract students, particularly medical students, because of the lifetime cap on student loans which are $257,000.
Today, I talked to a physician from Roanoke, Virginia, who has $500,000 in medical school debt. That math doesn't math. When you have enough medical school debt, you have enough debt to pay for somebody's house. Yet now, the next generation of students coming up behind him can only get half of that in Federal student loans. That math doesn't math.
I visited a dental clinic in Abingdon, Virginia. Before the dental clinic, most people west of Roanoke who needed dental services waited until once a year when the RAM Clinic came to Wise County. You would see the longest line you have ever seen of people waiting to get dental services because they live in a dental desert.
Now, this clinic was able to open, and 80 percent of their patients are Medicaid recipients. The other 20 percent are uninsured. They are worried what happens when the Medicaid cuts take effect and the 80 percent starts to decline as to how many are actually paying something. They won't be able to cover their costs. When Medicaid reimbursement rates were already too low for them to completely recover their costs, that is going to be even harder.
When I shared with the press what I was hearing from healthcare providers across the State, how they were worried they were going to have to close because of Medicaid cuts, the gentleman who represents that area said that Democrats are just spreading fear.
Well, imagine my surprise--actually not surprised--when last week Augusta Medical Group, which covers parts of southwest Virginia, announced they were closing three primary care centers in western Virginia as part of its response to the one big, ugly big.
It is not hyperbole. You have rural hospitals that are already operating on the margins who now are going to have to provide more uncompensated care.
Mr. Speaker, when people come off of Medicaid and when the Enhanced Premium Tax Credits for purchasing insurance on the Affordable Care Act Exchange expire if we don't act by the end of this year and more people become uninsured, they are not going to magically never get sick. They are going to get sick.
When they get sick and show up for care, they will go to the emergency rooms. They will be treated. It is going to be more expensive to treat them. It will be uncompensated care. Guess who pays for that? We do when our insurance premiums go up or when the price of care goes up to recover the cost from private insurers.
All of these jobs that are lost, that is also employer-provided health insurance. That is even more uninsured.
My colleagues on the Energy and Commerce Committee said they are trying to make sure Medicaid is made sustainable for future generations. That bill did not do a thing to address the underlying reasons healthcare costs are going up. It just provided that fewer people would end up getting health insurance, up to 17 million according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Mr. Speaker, I heard a lot about the SNAP benefit cuts. I heard from recipients who were worried, but I also heard from grocery stores, rural and urban. I represent Surry County. Surry County has one grocery store. It opened last year. Prior to that, it didn't have a grocery store for 20 years. That meant that people in Surry County drove 30 minutes to go grocery shopping. They couldn't get a lot of perishable items. They could only get what would fit in a cooler.
The Surry Marketplace helped with that. The Surry Marketplace took forever, but we were able to help them become eligible for SNAP. They would receive SNAP benefits. They knew that certain times of the month the SNAP recipients would come in. It was mostly the seniors living in two senior facilities within walking distance to the grocery store.
The grocery store bought enough fresh food, produce and meat, that made it sustainable for the market to buy fresh food in bulk and know it would be sold. That is 10 percent of their revenue.
Their worry is that when people lose their SNAP benefits, they can't count on that bulk anymore. It will be harder for them to keep their doors open.
I heard the same thing from the market in Church Hill in downtown East End, Richmond. Both of these areas were food deserts before these stores opened. By the way, a lot of their customers are also Medicaid recipients. The same people who lose access to the food benefits and lose access to their healthcare in the HUD funding bill could lose access to rental assistance, as well.
I heard a lot about FEMA cuts. We had a water infrastructure roundtable. I represent cities that have water infrastructure that is over 100 years old. One of them received a grant to help upgrade its water treatment plant and its water infrastructure that failed earlier this year during a storm.
They got a resiliency grant from FEMA to help upgrade that infrastructure so they would know that when there is a natural disaster the water infrastructure will survive it and the people in the region will have clean drinking water. The Department of Homeland Security canceled that grant, saying it had nothing to do with natural disasters.
Mr. Speaker, I think we all want to be sure that a water infrastructure system will provide clean drinking water when there is a hurricane, a tropical storm, or another natural disaster.
From childcare to healthcare to housing to utility bills, these are just a few of the things that I heard from my constituents about how the price of everything is going up. You name it, Mr. Speaker.
So far, the funding actions of the President and Congress have made it worse. We passed an energy bill last week that gutted the very programs that help people weatherize their homes to reduce their energy costs. We cut in half the very department that has that program.
People ask me: Weren't you elected to help people solve problems?
I was, but we have to work together to do it. Just because Republicans are in the majority does not mean that they only govern over Republicans. Democrats, Independents, and Republicans in Virginia's Fourth District and across the Commonwealth want us to come together to help them solve their problems. That is what the best of government does. It does not make them worse.
In November, the people made very clear--and they continue to make clear today--the cost of everything is too high. When I talk to Republicans, Democrats, and Independents--rural, urban, and suburban-- no matter where they were born, no matter what language they speak, no matter the color of their skin, no matter who they love, no matter how they worship, they want three things: They want to know they live in a thriving and healthy community. They want to know that they have a job that allows them not just to pay their bills but to have a fair shot at a better life for their children than they had. When they get sick, they want to know they can go to the doctor and not go bankrupt.
Every single person that I talked to in my district during the August period said it is getting harder to do that, and they are afraid it is not going to get better.
We answer to our constituents. When we all took our oath of office, we took an oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and to do our jobs to the best of our ability.
When we see people who are hurting and we have the ability to help, our job--or as Matthew 25 says: When we see somebody who is hungry, we feed them. When we see someone who is homeless, we give them shelter. When we see someone who is sick, we provide them care. When we see a stranger, we welcome them. When someone is in prison, we visit them. At a minimum, how about we make sure they are in conditions that are humane?
We can do a lot better. The American people deserve better. It is going to require us to put politics aside and focus on the people. We have 22 days to do it, Mr. Speaker. We have 22 days to decide: Are we going to come together, find common ground, fund this government in a way that helps people and puts people over politics, or are we going to let it all shut down?
I didn't come here to shut down the government. I also didn't come here to vote for a bill that strips food out of children's mouths and that strips healthcare away from the people that need it. That is not what my constituents sent me here to do.
That is not what my constituents sent me here to do. That is not what this government has done in the past when people were hurting.
I end where I started. My parents saw the best of government, and they saw the worst of government.
If we had another hour, I could walk down the path of how a lot of what I am seeing in 2025 reminds me of what my grandparents saw in 1925 or what my great-grandparents saw in 1905, but we only have 1 Special Order hour and not 2.
Let me just say: Let's find our better angels and show the American people the best of government, where we come together and put people over politics and meet their needs and solve problems together.
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