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Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise today with colleagues to talk about the vote we will cast tomorrow on extending Affordable Care Act premium tax credits.

We missed an opportunity in June. In June, the reconciliation bill that was passed by the Senate contained $1 trillion of tax cuts for people who are in the 1 percent--the Nation's wealthiest, who didn't need a tax cut--but we refused to extend premium tax credits so that 20-plus million Americans could afford health insurance.

Just by order of magnitude, we could have extended the tax credits as is for 10 years at a cost of $350 billion. That is not inexpensive, but it is one-third of the cost of the tax credits that we handed away to the wealthiest 1 percent of people in this country, who don't need it.

I can assure you that my Virginians need these ACA premium tax credits. If we do not extend the tax credits in the simple bill the Democrats have on the floor tomorrow, the best estimates are that 94,000 Virginians will lose their enrollment in health insurance through our ACA Marketplace. Of those 94,000, 50,000 will go uninsured. They won't be able to find any other insurance.

Because the Affordable Care Act carries with it funding for States, Virginia stands to lose $295 million in Federal funding, have a significant hit of more than $400 million to the State's gross domestic product, lose about 3,500 jobs, and also lose around $31 million in State and local tax revenue.

But the numbers aren't what is important; the experiences of people and the fear and anxiety that they are telling us about are what is important.

Christine Casey in Crozet, VA--her premiums will go from $485 a month to $1,730 a month--more than tripling.

Paula Graham in Virginia Beach--her premium is going to go from $285 a month to $1,018 a month--more than quadrupling.

I have story after story after story from Virginians in all parts of the Commonwealth--rural, urban, and suburban, youngsters and seniors, people who left a job they didn't like but they had to have because it provided health insurance, to start a business where they can afford insurance on the exchange, and they now find it unaffordable. That not only affects healthcare, but it may require them to give up on the economic dream they had and go back to a job they don't like just so they can afford insurance.

So it is my hope, together with my colleagues, that we do the right thing, that we extend the Affordable Care Act tax credit support for a period of time--3 years--where then members of the HELP Committee and the Finance Committee and other committees can grapple with long-term solutions to issues like pharmacy, affordability, and other important things that we have shown we can work together on on a bipartisan basis.

But there is no reason at this late moment to consign, right before the holidays, Virginians and Americans who are already suffering through higher energy prices, higher costs for building supplies, higher costs for toys for Christmas, for everything else in their lives--to consign them, probably in the most important expenditure in their lives, to dramatic increases in costs that will lead many to go without healthcare, thus damaging their own health and the health of their families.

I urge my colleagues to embrace the simple extension of the ACA tax credits in the vote we will have tomorrow.

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