Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On President Trump And Senate Republicans’ Brutal Plan To Provide Tax Breaks To Billionaires At The Expense Of American Families

Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor to decry Republicans’ dangerous plan to enact permanent tax cuts for billionaires by slashing essential programs, increasing the national debt at the expense of American families. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

This week, Donald Trump and the Republican party are hitting Americans with a brutal one-two punch.

On one side, Donald Trump has hit Americans with a massive tax hike through his extremely dumb tariffs.

On the other side, Senate Republicans are getting ready to take away vital programs, throw people off Medicaid, all so they can give massive tax breaks to billionaires.

It’s a brutal Republican pincer move, with American families trapped in the middle. Donald Trump’s tariffs raise costs and pick people’s pockets on one side, and Trump’s budget cuts are taking away health care and benefits and veterans care on the other side.

If Republicans pass their agenda, eighty million Americans will be at risk of losing coverage.

Rural hospitals, community health centers, nursing homes will be at risk of closure.

If Republicans proceed this week, Senate Democrats will expose their agenda for the American people to see.

We will pick their bill apart. We will put them on record. We will force Republicans to explain in multiple ways – again, and again, and again – why they want to cut taxes for the rich at the expense of working people.

Senate Republicans are so hell-bent on cutting taxes for billionaires they seem ready to detonate the rules of the Senate, and break their word, to get it done.

Republicans spent years preaching about preserving Senate rules and protecting regular order. But now that their billionaire tax cuts are on the line, the rules don’t seem to matter for them.

We all know what’s going on here:  Senate Republicans don’t want to admit that their plan to make these tax cuts permanent will add $37 trillion to the debt. $37 trillion! That more than doubles the totality of our national debt today. More than doubles it. It is reckless and it is dangerous.

So, Republicans in essence want to pretend like their trillion dollar tax cuts are free, like magic. Or as Chip Roy, one of the most conservative republicans around here said, like “fairy dust.” A middle school math student could tell you this is ridiculous.

House Republicans must tread carefully. I say it to them over there, particularly to the ones on the hard-right: if they go along with this dangerous gimmick hatched by Senate Republicans, they will pave the way to add $37 trillion to the debt.

Republicans will forever incinerate any credibility they have to complain about debt and deficits. When you go home, Senate Republicans, don't tell your constituents that you want to cut the debt. $37 trillion.

And far worse than that, these billionaire tax breaks – and the gargantuan deficit they will create – will haunt our children and our grandchildren with sky high interest rates, a hobbled economy, and rampant inequality.

It’s not the world I want my grandchildren to grow up in.

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