Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Ahead Of Day-Long Debate On Senate Republicans’ Budget Bill That Will Give Tax Breaks To Billionaires At The Expense Of Working Americans

Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor ahead of tonight’s vote-a-rama, where Senate Democrats will expose the truth about Republicans’ reconciliation budget bill agenda—tax cuts for billionaires at the expense of working Americans. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

The Senate is in for a very long day, and a very long night.

Over the next day or so, Senate Republicans will try to advance a budget resolution that clears the way to cut taxes for Donald Trump’s billionaire friends.

Democrats are going to hold the floor all day long – and all night long – to expose how Republicans want to cut taxes for billionaires while gutting things Americans care about most: health care, jobs, public safety, national security, housing, education.

This is going to be a long, drawn out fight. This reconciliation budget bill is only the first step, albeit an important one.

Days like today – where we vote on amendments late into the night – go a long way to revealing where each party stands and who each party is fighting for.

Democrats are glad to have this debate. We're happy to have it a few more times, if the Republican Leader so wants.

Democrats will show in each of these debates where Republicans truly stand deep down: not with working people, but on the side of billionaires like Elon Musk.

If you became wealthy fairly and squarely, we don’t begrudge you. But you’re doing fine, and you certainly don’t need a massive tax break.

And yet, that is precisely what Republicans are getting ready to do: give billionaires another tax break, and make the American people pay the cost.

If Senate Republicans really think the best solution for inflation is to put more money in the pockets of the billionaire class, Democrats will make sure the American people know it.

We will expose Republicans’ plans to cut health care, so that billionaires can have another tax break.

We will expose Republicans’ plans to gut housing and to defund NIH.

They want to stop cancer research? To stop research into diseases that are hurting, harming, and even killing our loved ones?

They want to cut nutrition? To make housing costs go up? To hurt food inspection? To stop the fight against bird flu here, or Ebola overseas, so that they don't harm us?

They are doing all those things that make no sense, so they can cut taxes for billionaires. No way, we say. That's wrong for the American people, and the more they learn about it, the less they're going to like the Trump agenda that Republicans in the Senate are following.

Republicans can spin their agenda however they want.

They can try to pass one bill, two bills, fifty bills, it doesn’t matter.

They can slice and dice their policies in whatever order they wish.

It doesn’t matter in the end.

The end game is the same for Donald Trump and the Republican majority: tax cuts for billionaires paid for on the backs of working and middle class Americans.

This is not – absolutely not – what the American people signed up for.

The American people want to see inflation go down. It's gone up in the last month, even though Donald Trump said it will go down starting on day one.

They want to see their paychecks go up.

They want to see more jobs, they want to see better jobs.

They want to see more ladders to the middle class and they want to find ways to stay in the middle class once they get there.

Republicans, meanwhile, have abandoned the working and middle class.

In just one month, Donald Trump and Republicans have eviscerated so many of our institutions in order to cater to the whims of billionaires.

Donald Trump has defied the rule of law, he’s ignored court orders, he’s even fancied himself a king, while all his billionaire friends spread through the government like locusts and put public services that serve tens of millions of people at risk.

While Elon Musk holds court in the Oval Office and meets with heads of state, Head Start programs and community health centers have seen their funding shut off.

Donald Trump preaches about corruption and fraud, all the while ridding the government of its independent watchdogs and letting DOGE go through people’s social security numbers – and even their private tax and health data – with virtually no guardrails, no check.

All this chaos is by design.

All this lawlessness has a goal.

Everything we have seen over the last month from Donald Trump and the Republicans has one end game in mind: undermine the rule of law in order to put more money in the pockets of billionaires like Elon Musk.

Nothing crystalizes the broken core of Republicans’ agenda better than their tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy.

###