Restoring Enhanced Premium Tax Credits

Floor Speech

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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, it is with great honor that I rise today for the third week in a row to anchor the Congressional Black Caucus' Special Order hour to tell stories of people who stand to lose their health insurance if Congress does not act in 22 days.

Mr. Speaker, 22 days. We have 22 days to prevent at least 5 million people from losing their health insurance.

For the past 3 weeks, the Congressional Black Caucus has brought stories of the 22 million people who will see their health insurance premiums double or even triple and, for some, spike beyond their ability to pay when enhanced premium tax credits expire in 22 days. An estimated 5 million people will lose their health insurance because they can't afford these new premiums. The Congressional Black Caucus has told stories of people concerned that they will be among those 5 million.

Mr. Speaker, I have good news. This Thursday, the Senate will have two competing plans on the floor for a vote. Yet, Speaker Johnson still has not committed to allowing a vote on the floor in this body.

Leader Jeffries has a discharge petition open right now to extend the tax credits, and we just need four Republicans to join us in signing it.

House Democrats have come forward with a plan. Senate Democrats have come forward with a plan. Senate Republicans have come forward with a plan. The administration still doesn't seem to have a concept of a plan, but we have 22 days where the American people are expecting us to act.

Mr. Speaker, I will begin this Special Order hour by yielding to the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Chair Yvette Clarke of New York.

Ms. CLARKE of New York. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Virginia for her hard work and dedication in anchoring the Special Order hour of the Congressional Black Caucus for 3 consecutive weeks, as she has rightly stated. We are so proud of the work she is doing to uplift the stories of people across this Nation who are standing on the edge of what could be catastrophic in terms of healthcare.

Mr. Speaker, good evening, I am Representative Yvette D. Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, proudly representing New York's Ninth Congressional District, which is located in central and southwest Brooklyn.

I thank my colleague once again, Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan, for anchoring this Congressional Black Caucus Special Order hour.

I rise tonight, Mr. Speaker, with my colleagues of the Congressional Black Caucus to bring awareness to the fast approaching ACA tax credit funding deadline and to give voice to everyday Americans who will be harmed by the Republican-led healthcare crisis. The enhanced ACA tax credits are set to expire on December 31 unless congressional Republicans join Democrats to extend them.

In a few short weeks, millions of Americans will be forced to pay astronomical prices for their health insurance. Many will lose coverage altogether because they will not be able to afford it.

I want to share the story of a constituent who lives in my district in Brooklyn, a woman who wants to work, who does work, and who contributes to her community every single day.

Denise, of Prospect Lefferts Gardens, is self-employed. She is a graphic designer. She also lives with lupus, a serious autoimmune condition that requires consistent care and access to specialists. The only reason she has been able to stay in the workforce is because of the Affordable Care Act, and specifically the enhanced premium tax credits that have made quality health insurance something she could actually afford.

Those credits lowered her monthly premium enough so that she could manage her health, pay her rent, and keep her small business going. However, now she is being told that if these enhanced credits expire, her premium could double.

When she found out that her healthcare costs could become unaffordable, she said: ``The only reason I can work at all is because I can manage my lupus with regular care. I can't pay New York City rent, pay those premiums, and keep my business going. It feels like Congress is telling disabled people, don't work, go back on full benefits.''

Mr. Speaker, doubling someone's premium doesn't just strain a budget, it changes a life. It forces people to give up work. It pushes people with disabilities out of the workforce. It tells them that independence is a luxury that they can't afford.

My constituent does not want to stop working. She does not want to give up, but if Congress allows these credits to expire, we are effectively telling her and millions like her that staying insured and staying employed are no longer compatible choices. That is wrong. It is within our power to prevent it.

All 214 Democrats have signed a discharge petition that will extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits for 3 years. All we need are four Republicans who are willing to join us in protecting our Nation's healthcare.

Allowing these tax credits to expire is, indeed, a choice, and it is the wrong choice. Our communities are counting on us to do the right thing and to put their needs over politics. It is people over politics.

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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank our chair for her tireless efforts to fight for our constituents who have found their healthcare costs going up along with the cost of everything else.

I yield to the former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, the gentlewoman from Ohio's Third District, Representative Joyce Beatty.

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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Beatty for her remarks.

Mr. Speaker, earlier today, Punchbowl News reported that Speaker Johnson is planning a long process to fix healthcare. The Speaker says he anticipates working on healthcare through the second quarter of the year and have a vote in the first quarter or the second quarter. He acknowledges that there is a lot to fix in healthcare.

Mr. Speaker, open enrollment ends on January 15. The new premiums, without the enhanced premium tax credits, take effect for 22 million Americans on January 1. Do you know who can't wait 6 months for a healthcare fix? The 5 million Americans who are estimated to find they can no longer afford their health insurance premiums when the premium goes up.

I don't understand the priorities that Congress focused on this year. I really don't. I don't understand how under H.R. 1, which I call the big, ugly bill, Congress bent over backward, congressional Republicans specifically, bent over backward to provide permanent tax breaks for people who make over $500,000 a year, such as a permanent $15 million gift or estate tax break or a tax break for buying an airplane, but for people who make $64,000 a year or a family of four who makes just over $129,000 a year, congressional Republicans just expect them to absorb health insurance premiums that will double or triple.

In my district, that family of four earning just over $129,000 a year will see their premiums increase by $4,675. A 60-year-old couple earning $82,800 a year will see their premiums increase by $11,968.

My State legislators have predicted at least 60,000 Virginians will have to cancel their insurance coverage. Who are some of these people?

We have heard stories, at least under the Medicaid cut debate, we heard Speaker Johnson say, well, these are young men who are living in their parents' basement playing video games. Who are we talking about? Who are these families who are going to see their health insurance premiums spike? They are restaurateurs, beauticians, landscapers, mediators, chiropractors, funeral directors, farmers, freelancers, contractors, and gig workers. They are the ones caught in the cross fire of a political battle that has now reached a stalemate.

Roughly, half of the adults covered under the Affordable Care Act, about 10 million people, are small business owners, their employees, or the self-employed, according to KFF. One of them lives in my district. Well, one of the businesses is in my district. There are several people who work there.

Lester Johnson and his wife, Yolanda, own and run Mama J's, which is a very good--I highly recommend it--southern cooking, soul food restaurant in my district in Jackson Ward, which was once known as the Harlem of the South. I talked to Lester and he said: It is a lot of gamesmanship, and the people are like the pawns.

Lester and his wife and his daughter rely on the Affordable Care Act. They pay right now about $700 a month. He looked at his bill and his bill would go up more than $1,400 if he loses the tax credit.

He has about 40 employees and they will see their premiums spike, as well. It is a lot of money for people, Lester said, and not knowing what the price is going to be because of a stalemate in Congress adds uncertainty. I think everybody is feeling the anxiety.

Who else can't wait for 6 months?

Who else can't wait for 6 months? A lot of people who rely on the Affordable Care Act live in States that voted for the current President, or people who voted for the current President, or live in red districts, like Reagan Fisher Wyssbrod from Salem, Virginia, who works three part-time jobs to help support her family while keeping the flexibility she needs for her children. She spends some days as a substitute teacher and as a business manager for a library association. She does some bookkeeping on the side. None of these jobs offers benefits.

Her projected monthly premium increased by $400, raising her monthly out-of-pocket costs to $1,900, and her doctor moved out of network. It is astonishing, she said. She spent 3 weeks combing through plans and eventually found one that would save her family about $100 a month, bringing her premium down to $1,800, but the deductible is a lot higher. Worst case scenario, her out-of-pocket costs would be $20,000 on top of the monthly premium.

She said, ``Ultimately, it came down to: I don't go to the doctor that often. My kids don't go to the doctor that often. And so, we just rolled the dice. We will wrap some bubble wrap around us, I guess.''

Bubble wrap is not going to help if she has a heart attack. Bubble wrap is not going to help if she is in a car accident. Bubble wrap is not going to help those mothers of premature babies who spend, on average, $70,000 a day in a NICU stay.

Victoria Cassels, an accountant in Roanoke, worries about her adult daughter in Richmond, who is a self-employed graphic designer with an autoimmune disease.

This year, her monthly premium rose by $400, about three times higher than it was last year. She plans to help her daughter cover the cost if she can't take on enough work to meet the new expenses.

Cassels, who prepares taxes for individuals and small businesses, says that more of her younger clients are talking about dropping health insurance altogether. In the last few years, she has had a slew of clients in their twenties and thirties who have started their own business. They are just getting started in life. They don't have the savings to afford the increasing cost of health insurance. They are probably going to have to put off starting a family because, without health insurance, being pregnant and childbirth are pretty expensive, even with insurance.

Ben Pearman, a financial adviser from Bent Mountain in Roanoke County, also runs his own business. Higher monthly costs have led him to reconsider his options. A single man in his fifties, he pays for his own health plan, and next year, his monthly premium will jump from $724 to $935. He can absorb the higher cost but is considering switching to concierge care that will let him pay a flat monthly rate or an annual fee. If he did that, he wouldn't have insurance if an accident happened. Accidents happen.

I remember one such accident when my son, just before his third birthday, grabbed my curling iron and burned his hand. This was a Saturday. After a trip to the emergency room--we were in a rural county that didn't have a burn unit--they said: Well, you can either go home to Richmond, a 3-hour drive, and on Saturday there is a burn clinic, and they can take him then, or we can see if we can get him admitted to the hospital tonight.

I said we were going to see if we could get him admitted because I had health insurance, and I knew the health insurance would cover it. If I didn't have health insurance, I probably would have had to wait for that burn clinic 3 days later, and his second-degree burn probably would have gotten infected.

We took the ambulance ride, and we got to the hospital. After that and a week in the burn unit, the total cost of that bill--and this is in 2013, so you know the prices have gone up--that entire bill was $15,000.

I had employer-provided insurance, so I paid $1,000. Imagine if I was one of these families that said that I am just going to wrap myself in bubble wrap or roll the dice and see what happens. $15,000 is a lot of money.

These are just a few of the stories of people who right now are struggling to figure out which bill they are going to pay. They are counting on us to help them.

Being a history maker who is also a history nerd, I have to tell a little history right now. My parents grew up during the Depression, and my father was born in 1925. He would have been 100 years old in September. He was just old enough to remember when the stock market crash happened. He didn't know what was going on. He was 4.

He remembered how his father one day owned an apartment complex, a newspaper, and a nightclub, and the next day lost everything due to circumstances outside of his control. He also remembered and told us the story about the stress that put on his parents.

A few years later, in 1934, his mother died from cancer when he was 10 years old. My dad went to Alabama to live with his grandparents, who founded a school. Because the State of Alabama didn't think it was important enough to educate Black children, his grandparents started a school.

My dad saw the best of government and the worst of government. He saw the worst of government through Jim Crow. He saw the best of government when Congress and the President, through the New Deal, responded to the Great Depression, responded to people who, through no fault of their own, were economically devastated.

My mother was born in the middle of the Depression, so she never knew anything other than poverty. She also experienced the best of government through the New Deal and the worst of government through Jim Crow.

Telling me these stories, I came to understand that, at its best, government is a force that helps people and solves problems, especially when those problems are due to factors beyond their control and the solutions are beyond their reach. That is the best of government. The worst of government is when a few benefit from the oppression of the many.

We just commemorated the D-day anniversary, a little bit later than the Depression, or as we were coming out of the Depression. There are only 12 people left who survived that. There are very few people alive today who remember the Great Depression. There are very few people today who remember when the United States Government lived up to its better nature and reached out, not to give a handout, but a hand up, to millions of Americans who, in the blink of an eye, lost everything and couldn't feed their families.

Mr. Speaker, my father was also a pastor. I can't help but think of him without thinking of Matthew 25:31-40. This is the story of the sheep and the goats, and this is what Jesus talks about.

``When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the Nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the king will say to those on his right: Come you, who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me in. I needed clothes, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you looked after me. I was in prison and you visited me.

And the righteous will say: Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or you needing clothes and we clothed you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?

The king will reply: Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.''

Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of people in this country who are hungry, who are sick, who are unhoused, who are strangers, and who are imprisoned.

This year, Congress basically said folks are on their own. This year, Congress basically said that we will make it harder for folks to eat. We will make it harder for people to get the care that they need.

The President of the United States fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep from feeding hungry children with money that Congress appropriated for that purpose in the event of a shutdown.

We passed legislation that will strip an estimated 17 million Americans of their health insurance at a time when Americans are looking to us to help them and solve problems.

The Affordable Care Act is not perfect. Do we really want to tell 22 million people that because Congress cannot stop playing political football with their lives, they have to gamble with whether or not they pay their health insurance bill when it is priced out of their reach?

They are expecting us to act. We have 22 days. Whether it is Leader Jeffries's discharge petition or whether it is one of the bills on the floor of the Senate, we have 22 days to act. We have 22 days to at least say we will make sure that for the next year or 2 years or however many we can, until this magical concept of a plan appears for us to vote on, we will help them a little bit to at least pay for their health insurance right now so they don't have to rely on bubble wrap or a wing and a prayer.

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