Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2026
Floor Speech
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Ms. SLOTKIN. Mr. President, I rise today in support of Ms. Baldwin's amendment on a clean 1-year extension on the healthcare.gov credits.
Since July, I have been really clear. If you want me to vote on a deal, it has got to do something to bring down the cost of healthcare because of the healthcare crisis that Republicans in this Chamber precipitated back in July.
Just to review the bidding, in July, the Big Beautiful Bill, which all of you voted for--most of you voted for--slashed Medicaid and slashed coverage for people on healthcare.gov. Now, all our hospitals, all our healthcare systems, all our nursing homes--everybody--accepted that and started to plan.
In response to that, the hospitals said: Well, look, people are still going to come. They are still going to get into car accidents. They are still going to have heart attacks. They are just not going to be covered by health insurance. So we are going to have to charge the people with insurance even more money.
So we are now at this point. This crisis that has been precipitated has led to the fact that every single American--everyone watching, everyone listening--is either facing losing their health insurance or paying more, and that includes people on private, employer-provided insurance.
When we take a step back and we look at all the people that are going to fall off healthcare, all the healthy young people that are not going to pay for healthcare anymore, it looks like--across, at least, my State--every single person is looking at their prices doubling, not just the people who are affected by the Big Beautiful Bill but the bill payers, the people on private health insurance.
No one in this room would say that we are paying too little for healthcare right now.
And I don't always agree with Senator Sanders, but I can say there is no more broken system in America than healthcare right now. It needs full rebuilding. We may disagree on some of the ways to do it, but the Republicans offered zero plan, zero ideas. Hell, Marjorie Taylor Greene is talking about how Republican don't have a plan. I never thought I would be agreeing with her.
So, today, all we are asking for is a clean 1-year extension. No one says ObamaCare is perfect. No one says a clean extension is perfect.
But you pushed people back into a corner. You have said we are going to pay for our tax cuts on the backs of everyday Americans by using their healthcare as the bill payer.
So can we do a 1-year extension, please, so that we can have some kind of conversation--a real conversation--that the American people expect people of our stature to be having? Can we have that conversation over the next year, but not, in some cases, have people's health insurance go up by 600 percent? That is what you have precipitated.
So to every American watching, whether you are on healthcare.gov or you are on private insurance, if you are getting those letters, if you are getting those notifications of an increase of your bill of $200, $500, $800 starting January 1, my peers on the other side of the aisle are the ones--you should lay it at their feet because they have put us in this place. And if they vote tonight against this, it is because they don't give a crap about the cost of your healthcare. They don't give one single crap about it.
So I hope my colleagues find it in their hearts to say: Let's fix the system, fine. But at least for now, give us a 1-year extension so we can have a real conversation.
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