National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it seems these days--and this is not a great development, but it seems these days as if Democrats love to hate anything that Republicans--and particularly President Trump--suggest or propose or do, especially when it comes to ways to try to shrink the size of our government and rightsize bloated Federal programs.

They have spent a lot of time and energy catastrophizing about all the supposed dangers of the One Big Beautiful Bill--one of the most important achievements of this administration and Congress so far. The truth about the One Big Beautiful Bill is that it prevented the largest tax hike in American history and puts more money back in the pockets of hard-working Americans.

Now, you would think that alone would be a good reason to support the One Big Beautiful Bill, but there is more.

The main way they have opposed that bill is by mischaracterizing it and outright misrepresenting what is contained in it. One of the accusations made is that it will take away healthcare coverage from people who need it.

Democratic Leader Senator Schumer said of the bill:

There is nothing beautiful about stripping away people's healthcare, forcing kids to go hungry, denying communities the resources they need, and increasing poverty.

Minority whip Senator Durbin claimed that we are going to be taking coverage away from 16 million families.

Now, if true, these accusations would be serious, but they are not true. In the more than 2 months since the One Big Beautiful Bill became law, the Congressional Budget Office has shed some light on this matter and I think done a tremendous job of truth-telling, and it is important to delve deeper into what they have said about this so the American people can know what the truth is.

CBO estimates that 10 million people will lose coverage due to the One Big Beautiful Bill. Now, again, that estimate without context seems pretty serious, but we have to ask, who are these 10 million people? Are they elderly grandmothers? Are they disabled citizens? Are they children? people who have no access to other resources? In fact, they are not. And I have no doubt that my colleagues will argue that they are in the coming months. In the coming months, ahead of the midterm elections, we will hear more about that, which is one reason why I wanted to come in and present the facts.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, 3.7 million of this 10 million--3.7 million of this 10 million--already had access through another form of federally subsidized healthcare. That is more than a third of that 10 million.

When we take this examination of the facts a step further, we see that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 5.3 million Americans out of that 10 million are individuals who choose not to work, which is one of the new requirements of the One Big Beautiful Bill.

These programs are supposed to go to the deserving and the needy, not to people who like to sit on the couch and play video games or otherwise not contribute to their own welfare. Work requirements for able-bodied adults were an important provision that I championed in this bill, and I am glad we got it done as part of this legislation. So able-bodied adults who willingly refuse to work shouldn't expect a handout from the Federal Government or the taxpayers who do work. It is only right that those who are able to work do so or at least demonstrate they are actively looking for a job or participating in some sort of job training or volunteer services.

Those are other alternatives to work: looking for a job or volunteering or training for work. Seems like a reasonable requirement to me.

There is just no reason for taxpayers to continue to pick up the tab for able-bodied Americans who choose not to enter the labor force.

And the truth is, we need them in the workforce. We need more people in the workforce, which is one of the issues I hear people talk about as I travel my State and around the country. We need the workforce to be able to keep our economy going and to provide for those who need help.

So able-bodied adults who are choosing not to comply with these work requirements make up more than half of those 10 million who will lose coverage, but they can change that. They can simply choose to work or study or go to school or volunteer, and they would get those benefits. But if you consciously choose not to, it makes sense to me that taxpayers should not be required to subsidize that.

Next, the CBO also estimates that 2\1/2\ million of the 10 million are not actually eligible for the program to begin with. That is a quarter of that 10 million aren't even eligible.

If we want to make sure that our safety net programs work and are stable, we have to ensure the benefits are actually going to people whom Congress has made eligible for these programs in the first place.

As the Presiding Officer knows, one of the biggest issues confronting our country is that we are $37 trillion in debt, and we can't just keep printing money and spending money and bankrupting our country and threatening the welfare of future generations. We have a present-day responsibility to address that, and we know that the status quo was not sustainable.

Assuring those who do not actually qualify are not taking benefits away from those who do is only common sense. It is the least we can do.

But that is not all. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 1.4 million of those who would lose coverage are actually not citizens in the first place, which is another category of ineligible individuals. So Congress has never authorized federally subsidized health coverage for noncitizens.

I don't think the American people who voted overwhelmingly for President Trump last November did so because they want to see taxpayers subsidize illegal aliens' healthcare.

In addition to the categories I just mentioned, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the remaining loss of coverage will be the result of reducing waste, fraud, and abuse within these programs-- again, something that is not particularly controversial, and I can't think of a single Texan I have talked to who was supportive of spending more of their hard-earned money for fraudulent or wasteful programs. In fact, the opposite is the case.

So at the end of the day, when we look at the numbers from the Congressional Budget Office that keeps the official scorecard for the U.S. Government, the story it tells is far different from the tale that our Democratic colleagues are trying to tell the American people.

The One Big Beautiful Bill is not taking healthcare coverage away from grandmas who are on a fixed income or single mothers. Rather, the reforms to the Medicaid Program in the One Big Beautiful Bill will ensure that the money that is spent goes to people who are eligible and who need it the most. That is the truth about the One Big Beautiful Bill.

So as much as my Democratic colleagues love to hate it, at the end of the day, this single legislative achievement of President Trump's second term of office delivers necessary reforms that will make life better for the American people.

Republicans will continue to never mind the naysayers and keep telling our constituents the truth about the One Big Beautiful Bill.

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