Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Urging Republicans To Ditch Their Deeply Unpopular 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 call out Republicans’ unpopular and dangerous plan to enact tax cuts for billionaires by taking away Americans’ health care and slashing essential programs, urging them to tread carefully amid the economic turmoil caused by the Trump administration. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

We are not even 100 days into Donald Trump’s second term, and his presidency is already a dumpster fire.

His tariffs, for one, are the largest tax hike on American families in half a century, since the Vietnam War.

His bumbling trade war wiped trillions of dollars from American retirement savings.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk is crashing the Social Security website, shutting down local offices, and disconnecting phone services. All these closures and firings show his real desire is to decimate Social Security.

In March, employment for U.S. small businesses with one to nine employees decreased by 98,000 jobs.

Consumer confidence is at a four-year low.

Outlook for the economy is at a twelve-year low.

The odds of a recession are at 60%. Some have argued, like Larry Fink, that the recession has already started according to the CEOs he’s talked to.

And what are Republicans in Congress doing about all this chaos, all this mess, all this severe harm to American families?

Here's their answer: cut taxes for billionaires!

And how are they going to pay for that? By taking away Americans’ health care, making it harder for working families to put food on the table, and slashing veterans assistance and help for rural communities, kids, and Americans with disabilities.

With the threats of a recession on the rise because of these tariffs, do House Republicans really want to sign their names on a bill that adds $37 trillion to the debt? They should tread carefully.

I said last Friday that, for all their hand wringing so far, the hard part for Republicans remains front of them.

The Republican agenda suffers from a fatal flaw: its various pieces are all unpopular on their own, but when pieced together, it’s even worse.

That’s why the Republicans are having such trouble coming together. It's not even to do with Democrats. The House and Senate Republicans are at loggerheads – members within each Republican caucus are at loggerheads. Why? Because the two policies are both unpopular – slashing Medicaid, reducing taxes on billionaires.

Americans don't like it, so the Republicans are tying themselves in a knot and trying to get this done against the will of the American people.

Republicans in Congress want to cut taxes for billionaires and pay for it by taking away Americans' health care and making it harder for working families to put food on the table. This is incredible.

With the threats of a recession on the rise because of these tariffs, do House Republicans really want to sign their name to this bill, as I said before?

The bottom line is, sooner or later, Republicans are going to have to face the music. There aren’t enough procedural gimmicks in the world to change reality: the Republican agenda, on both sides—slashing programs like health care that people need; tax cuts for billionaires—it's unpopular on both sides. It's not going to get any more popular moving forward.

And the Republicans will have to tie themselves in lots of pretzel knots to even get a bill passed.

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