Schumer Remarks on the Motion to Proceed to Trumpcare

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered remarks at Democrats’ weekly Tuesday press conference regarding the vote on the Motion to Proceed to the Senate GOP version of Trumpcare. Below are his remarks:

Good afternoon, everybody. I’m proud to be joined by our leadership team of Dick Durbin, Patty Murray, who’s also Ranking Member of HELP, Debbie Stabenow, and Ron Wyden, who is the Ranking Member of Finance.

So, it’s clear that they’re in trouble. John McCain gave the most amazing, moving speech, basically against the bill, and certainly against the process that Leader McConnell used. And I know that John thinks these things through thoroughly. And, he noted that he’d have some real trouble voting for final passage.

Anyone who thinks this is over is sadly mistaken. Leader McConnell has a long way to go before he can get this done. There are many, many Republicans who don’t like this bill, who don’t want to vote for it. They’re under enormous pressure to vote for it. But, they’ve stretched it out because they’re having such trouble. The proposal Leader McConnell made is nothing more than a ruse.

Anyone who voted to move to proceed and certainly anyone who votes to send this bill to conference is virtually certainly voting to kick millions off healthcare, to make it much harder to get coverage if you have a preexisting condition, to slash Medicaid and to give a huge amount of tax cuts to the rich.

Make no mistake about it: That’s what they’re doing and that’s what they know they’re doing. And they are so embarrassed and so ashamed of what they’re doing that McConnell can’t put that up for a vote. So he may come up with this fake final proposal. Which, as I said, is a ruse. It is repealing healthcare. People who vote for the final, yes on the final vote, will be voting to repeal healthcare plain and simple.

They will be voting to take 20, 25 million people off healthcare. They’ll lose it. They are voting to make it impossible, virtually impossible to take care of preexisting conditions. They are voting to slash Medicaid, which hurts so many in nursing homes, on opioid treatment, children with disabilities. And they are voting for big tax cuts for the rich.

Make no mistake about it: There is no doubt—and we all know when the bill gets to conference—who’s going to call the shots. The Freedom Caucus which will be for full repeal or something even worse than what came from the House. And remember—on the House bill, a whole number of Republican Senators said they wouldn’t vote for it.

So they’re under tremendous pressure from the hard right. You’ve seen the threats that have been made against people like Flake and Heller. But they know it’s the wrong thing to do substantively. They know it’s the wrong thing to do politically. And we have a darn good chance to beat this.

We’re going to do everything we can in this chamber, and the so many groups outside the chamber to make sure that this does not pass the Senate at the end of the day.

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