Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Slamming Republicans For Their Dangerous Budget Resolution, Eviscerating Vital Programs Like Medicaid While Giving Tax Giveaways To Billionaires

Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor at the start of debate of Senate Republicans’ budget resolution that will allow for tax cuts for the ultra-rich at the expense of American families by eviscerating vital programs such as Medicaid. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks:

A few minutes ago, for the second time this year, Senate Republicans began the process to pass legislation, eviscerating Medicaid, abandoning our kids, failing our veterans, and squandering our future, all for the sake of tax cuts for the ultra-rich.

This is the Republican agenda: billionaires win, American families lose.

Billionaires win, American families lose in the Republican plan.

Republicans have failed to be honest with the country about the true nature of their plans.

They have tried to hide their Medicaid cuts, they have tried to hide their billionaire tax giveaways, with budgetary gimmicks and with distractions. They’re tying themselves into knots. They don't want the American people to know what their agenda is.

Well, if Republicans won’t be straight with the American people about their agenda, Senate Democrats are glad to do it for them.

Tonight, my colleagues and I will begin to put the Republican agenda on trial before the court of public opinion, here on the floor of the Senate.

It’s going to be a long few days for Senate Republicans. Democrats will expose the dark corners of Republicans’ plan.

We will explain the devastating consequence, and highlight the many injustices that Republicans will inflict on people’s health care, on their financial security, on their children’s’ future, and on the very future of the American Dream itself.

We begin tonight with a topic close to home to all of us: Medicaid. It’s my honor to join my fellow Democrats to lay the case before the American people for how Republicans plan to destroy Medicaid as we know it, and harm millions and millions and millions of Americans.

We will share the stories of people back home. We will illustrate the full scale of the destruction these cuts would do.

And we will make it clear to the American people, while Republicans work like hell to eliminate Medicaid to cut taxes for the rich, Democrats are fighting to protect the health care the American people deserve and need.

And Medicaid will be the first – the first – of six different themes that we will focus on here on the floor.

Tomorrow we will focused likewise as—we debate this bill—on Republicans’ morally bankrupt tax breaks for billionaires.

And on Donald Trump’s dumb and costly tariffs.

On the need to stand up for our veterans and our national security

On the unprecedented corruption Donald Trump has unleashed in our government

And finally, on the existential fight to protect Social Security from the chainsaw of Elon Musk.

These are the themes we will cover today and tomorrow. This is the fight the American people need to see.

Because people’s lives and livelihoods are at stake. The health care that protects our kids is in danger. Our children, their health care is in danger. The benefits that keep our seniors whole are at risk. Senior citizens in their golden era could have Medicaid, the rug pulled out from under them, leaving them in dire straits. The investments that unlock America’s future stand on the edge of a knife.

Why? Why? Why are Republicans doing this? Why are they being so cruel, so callous, so thoughtless? Why are those in the billionaire bubble, who seem to run Donald Trump and Elon Musk? Why? Why are they doing this? Very simple. They are trying to give the ultra-rich another tax break. The Republicans are enthralled with these very wealthy, very greedy people, and all they want is a tax break. And when Donald Trump became president, they got control of the Republican party. And Elon Musk and Donald Trump are in the billionaire bubble.

And when Democrats expose all these cuts to health care and veterans aid and benefits for the American people to see, the American people think it’s sickening.

So tonight, let us begin with Medicaid. Seventy million – seventy million – people rely on Medicaid in one way or another to provide medical care, and tens of millions more are their families and friends. That includes seniors, newborns, parents, Americans with disabilities, rural communities that have access, perhaps, to a single hospital or clinic, if they’re fortunate. Medicaid makes all these things possible.

I want to focus on a truly sobering experience I had earlier this week visiting two senior centers in New York: Silver Lake Specialized Care and Rehab Center on Staten Island, and Carillon Nursing and Rehab on Long Island. These institutions alone, there’s just two of them, serve over 600 residents together, and employ hundreds of people. They are the lifeline to a local community—they help seniors with dementia, with post-surgical rehabilitation, physical disability, and so much more.

My visit to these communities was clouded by a shadow of fear and anger. I talked to senior citizens who knew if Medicaid was cut, they'd lose their health care. In fact, the owner of Silver Lake, one of the most esteemed health care facilities on Staten Island told me if the cut were even half what the Republicans were proposing, his home would close.

Hundreds of senior citizens would have no health care. Three hundred people would have lost their job. They were frightened. They were scared. They were angry. There's no question about it. Even if Republicans pass a fraction of the cuts they're pushing, it would devastate these communities.

We had the heads of major hospitals, many of them not the same party as mine there, telling us what would happen if these devastating cuts to Medicaid went through.

On Staten Island, we estimated 18,000 people would lose their jobs. Tens of thousands would no longer get health care. It would cause a recession on Staten Island like that.

Seniors at the centers, new seniors who are getting out of hospitals, or have a new illness that they were just encountering, would be turned away. There would be no funding. There would be no beds. There would be no place for them to go.

And it's not just the residents at these nursing homes, it's their children who can now breathe easy that their parents who helped raise them and worked so hard through the years to provide for them. Staten Island is a middle-class community. So is Long Island, the two places I visited, but their kids would not be able to care for most of them. Most of them need more health care than just going back to their kid’s home. It’s not enough. It's not adequate health care for so many of them. And others said their children had no extra room for them. What are even the kids going to do? In both Staten Island and Long Island, these are middle-class communities. They're going to be devastated by these cuts.

Some of the residents said their children might be able to take care of them but the burden would be immense. Many of these families don’t have the financial means to take care of their parents in their advanced age. They don’t have the space at home. They don’t have the medical know-how to meet their needs like a nursing home does.

And any of you, millions of Americans, who have a parent who struggled with dementia or physical disabilities, those people, we know that our parents need the help of medical professionals to care for them properly. And that’s why Medicaid is so vital, so important, such a lifeline to tens of millions of families across America.

The Republican Medicaid cuts would be a gut punch to these families. It would devastate New York, and devastate America. It was the same story on Long Island. Senior citizens scared, nervous, angry about what these budget cuts would do to them that the Republicans are proposing, that Trump and Musk are proposing. Workers worry they might lose their jobs. They work so hard in these facilities because they care about the patients they're caring for. Told no, no more funding, for no reason. They're doing a great job.

Same on Long Island as in Staten Island and the same across all of America, in poor communities which of course depend on Medicaid. So many people, Medicaid is their only lifeline to health care. To middle-class communities, even well-to-do communities, all of them nervous, scared, angry, furious of what these cuts would  do to them.

Why, people ask, why are they doing this? Why are they being so mean? Why are they being so cruel? Why are they being so callous? And we have the answer. For one reason.

They want to give billionaires a tax cut and they want to take the money away from working families, take things that working families need, take them away and give them so there are more tax cuts for the billionaires.

It angers me. It's infuriating that something so wrong, so callous, so detrimental to America could be right here on the Senate floor with the support of so many Republican senators.

I say to Republican senators, listen to your constituents. Listen to your constituents. They don't want this. You know that. You're going to get up on the floor and make a speech that says you're cutting Medicaid because you want to give tax breaks to billionaires? That's what you're doing. Get up and have the courage to say it. Get up and have the courage to say it.

The senior centers I visited were represented actually by Republican members of Congress in both Staten Island and Long Island.

There, I told every patient, every doctor, every nurse, every employee who works in these institutions to call their Congressmember, and tell them that their jobs are at risk. If they’re a resident tell them their health care is at risk with these cuts. If they're a child of a parent in one of these nursing homes, call. I told them to make it clear to their Congressmen that the Republican Congressmen and senators have the power, in their hands, to stop these cuts, because of the narrow margin in the Senate and the House. A handful of senators, a handful of Congressmen. If they had the courage to do the right thing—and some of them at least know it is the right thing, even though they're afraid to vote no and stop this. But they should have the courage to do it.

So I told them, I told everyone I encountered in these two nursing homes and many other places in New York. I went to a hospital in the Bronx, one of the biggest hospitals. It serves 1.3 million people in the Bronx. It's the only cancer care treatment for all those 1.3 million. The leaders of that hospital told me, the hospital would probably close if there were a 20% cut to Medicaid and the Republicans are proposing a deeper cut than that in this budget bill. Close the only hospital, one of the biggest employers. It employs 18,000 people itself.

And this story could be repeated. The Bronx is a poorer community. Staten Island, Long Island, more middle-class communities but every one of them will be affected terribly by these cuts. So I told them to call. I tell everyone, we have to stop this. Public sentiment is everything.

Every American in a similar position to those I spoke to should do the same. Call your congressman. Call your senator. Tell them don't want Medicaid to be slashed.

Tell them you don't want nutrition assistance to be to eliminated. Tell them you don’t want seniors to be abandoned. Tell them you don’t want to see these cuts, these cruel, heartless cuts, just so the wealthiest Americans can get another break they don't need.

That's what the next few days are about: fighting these awful cuts that are being done to help the wealthiest Americans get a tax break.

That is the fight Democrats will have here on the Senate floor. That is the fight we will have tonight. That is the fight we will have tomorrow and beyond. Democrats are fighting every day in every way these attacks against American families, against this plan which says billionaires win, families lose. Democrats stand united – we are unified in fighting this awful bill.

We will fight the Republican antifamily agenda. We will shine a light on these terrible cuts that Republicans are trying to pass.

The American people will be horrified at what they see.

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