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Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. Well, thank you, and thank you so much for raising all of these issues about the threat to our democracy. Authoritarianism is running rampant. Healthcare, education, our environment are all being threatened in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
And so I would ask if the Senator would yield for a question.
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Mr. MARKEY. Thank you. So Republicans are shutting down the government to cut Americans' healthcare. In fact, Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans have been shutting down our government since day one. We are witnessing a Robin Hood in reverse as Republicans make deep healthcare cuts and steal from those most in need, all to pay tax breaks to CEO billionaires in our country.
And as a result of Trump's ``Big Ugly Bill,'' over 320,000 Massachusetts residents could lose insurance coverage. That is almost 5 percent of the entire State. The Commonwealth could lose over $2 billion in Medicaid funding, absolutely, with Massachusetts hospitals losing $424 million each year, erasing 19,000 healthcare jobs in the State of Massachusetts alone.
After ripping healthcare away from hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents, MAGA Republicans are now willing to dramatically raise health insurance costs for even more families. If the premium tax credits from the American Rescue Plan expire at the end of this year, 337,000 additional Massachusetts residents will see their health insurance costs spike. In the process, our residents collectively will lose $425 million in tax credits each and every year, averaging over $1,300 per enrollee each year. Some can see their premiums surge over $1,000 a month, leaving them an annual premium of more than $25,000.
So this healthcare premium bomb is about to go off all across our country on kitchen tables--dramatic increases in the costs for healthcare for families. That is just unacceptable.
The price of groceries is up. The price of electricity is up. And now Trump and his MAGA Republicans want to jack up the cost of health insurance, forcing families from Boston to the Berkshires, from Portland, ME, to Portland, OR, to make difficult choices to make ends meet.
Right now, thanks to these tax credits, a couple in their thirties earning $50,000 in the city of Boston with two children could pay just $4 a month for their health insurance premiums. But soon, if Trump and MAGA Republicans decide to let these credits expire, that couple will receive a notice in the mail that they will have to pay $176 a month, a 4,000-percent increase costing thousands of dollars more per year.
A 62-year-old couple living in Watertown that earns $86,000 a year could pay $1,700 more each month.
A 58-year-old living in the Berkshires making $32,000 a year could see their premiums increase by 170 percent.
Last week, Democrats on the Small Business Committee, on which I serve as ranking member, released new data showing over 10 million small business owners and their employees rely on the Affordable Care Act's enhanced premium tax credits to afford health insurance.
Small businesses are the heartbeat of our economy. But Republicans are turning Main Street into ``Pain Street.'' Republicans are making a Jenga tower of our healthcare system. They remove one block, access to Medicaid, and then another, health insurance tax credits. They already have put us into a healthcare crisis.
But they don't stop there. Republicans have cut or frozen over $1.3 billion in grants to Massachusetts from the National Institutes of Health for lifesaving medical research and clinical trials. They are gutting our public health workforce by revoking temporary protective status for Haitians and Venezuelans and directing ICE to terrorize lawful immigrants who are disproportionately healthcare and human service workers.
We know these cuts will have even worse impacts on Black and Brown communities. Right now, 60 percent of Black children rely on Medicaid for their healthcare. Sixty percent of Black children in our country rely upon Medicaid for their healthcare. If these cuts go through, millions could lose access to checkups, asthma treatments, and mental health care to keep families healthy and children in school. It would leave parents with impossible choices between medicine and meals. And restrictions on Medicaid don't just trim budgets, they cut into lives.
With each Jenga block Republicans remove from the tower, Americans' healthcare becomes more and more unstable. We know how Jenga ends. The tower collapses. That is where we are heading right now.
But Democrats are not going to let our healthcare system collapse. The Republicans want to loot the healthcare system of tens of billions of dollars and then hand it over in tax breaks to the Republican billionaires who are their supporters. Well, the Democrats are not going to drive the getaway car in the biggest healthcare financial heist in the history of our country. We are not going to do that. We are fighting to keep the premiums affordable.
Republicans call it a government shutdown because they don't want to admit what they and Trump are doing. It is a healthcare shutdown and Speaker Johnson has Republicans in a political witness protection program right now. They are scattered all over the country. We want them to come here so we can negotiate with them to solve this healthcare problem.
We can solve the government shutdown and end the healthcare crisis with one vote--one vote on the floor of the House and the Senate. It wouldn't take more than that. They just have to come here.
Right now, what we have is a President saying: Well, there is nothing to negotiate on the shutdown.
So, ultimately, that is going to be the challenge which this country is going to be facing because the Republicans are refusing to come to negotiate.
We are calling on Donald Trump and Republicans to reverse their cruel cuts, return the funding they looted from our healthcare system, and restore access to essential care for all Americans.
So I have a question for my colleague. As this ticking healthcare timebomb gets closer to exploding, how will it hurt Americans' wallets and our national economy?
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Mr. MARKEY. Would the Senator yield for a question?
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Mr. MARKEY. I want you to follow up a little bit on that University of North Carolina Sheps Center study. I requested them to do that study. It came back, and it was a blistering, scalding indictment of the Republicans' support for these dramatic cuts to our healthcare system.
And it concluded, as you said, that over 330 hospitals--rural hospitals--in our country, would close. That was 30 in Kentucky, 30 in Louisiana--disproportionately in rural America.
Could you talk about that, maybe a little bit more, especially in terms of your home State of Oregon but what that portends for the rest of the country in terms of the provision of healthcare services and then the flooding of the other hospitals' emergency rooms, the increase in the premiums for those who can afford health insurance--but the costs are just going to skyrocket--and elaborate, if you could, just a little bit more on that looming crisis?
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