Schumer Floor Remarks on a Bipartisan Path Forward on Healthcare, Tax Reform, and the Need for President Trump to Put Economic Pressure on China
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered remarks on the Senate floor regarding the need for bipartisanship to improve our healthcare system, the need for a bipartisan discussion on tax reform as well as a recent letter the Senator sent to President Trump regarding the need to place economic pressure on China in response to North Korea’s threatening behavior. Below are his remarks:
Mr. President, the American people are looking to Congress to turn the page on healthcare and start working on bipartisan improvements to our healthcare system.
Stabilizing the individual market is the first thing we should all focus on.
The repeated attempts to repeal and replace the healthcare law, as well as the Administration’s threat to stop making the cost-sharing payments that help keep premiums down and keep markets stable – has injected massive uncertainty into the system.
Insurers hate nothing more than uncertainty. It drives them to jack up the cost of premiums and pull out of markets.
Already, insurers in three states have issued two separate sets of proposed rates for 2018 – one if the Administration makes the cost-sharing payments, and one if they do not. The set of proposed rates if the payments are NOT made is 20% higher in all three states.
Two of them are North Carolina and Pennsylvania, very significant states.
In Idaho, the state insurance commissioner said that rates on the most popular plans would be 50% higher next year because of "the potential refusal by the federal government to fund the cost share reduction mechanism."
That comes from the State Insurance Commissioner. I don't know if that's an elected position, but whether it's elected or appointed, I’d guess he's Republican. They don't elect too many Democrats, out there.
Now, the Administration is supposed to announce – today or sometime this week – their decision on whether or not to make the next set of payments.
The ball is in the President’s court: he can make the payments as the law requires and needs, or he can sabotage our healthcare system and impose a Trump Premium Tax of 20% higher premiums on the American people next year by not extending the cost-sharing program.
Why would he do this? Why would he why would he raise people's rates? Well, his only stated reason is petty, is childish and un-presidential. He'll get back at people because his hope to repeal and replace was rejected. You don't hurt innocent people, Mr. President, when you lose politically. That is not presidential. That is not, frankly, what an adult does.
President Trump has already made it harder for Americans to afford insurance next year by publicly rooting for our nation’s healthcare system to collapse, injecting a baseline of uncertainty into the system. President Trump would make things a whole lot worse by not making the next set of payments – 20% higher premiums, more bare counties, even more market instability.
The American people need a president who puts their interests first, not someone who plays political games with their healthcare. The American people can ill-afford a Trump premium tax year, and it’s completely, completely avoidable. All President Trump has to do is make the payments and carry out the law as he’s supposed to.
Afterwards, Congress should move to guarantee these payments permanently or at least for a significant period of time. The uncertainty caused by the President’s threats has been the single most destabilizing factor in the individual market – and that’s not according to Chuck Schumer or any Democrat – that’s according to the insurers’ largest trade group AHIP. The President has proven that he cannot be trusted to faithfully execute the procedures that keeps our healthcare system on track.
The only good news here is there are moves by people both sides of the aisle in this Senate to take some of it uncertainty off the table by guaranteeing these payments in the future.
My good friends, the Chairman of the HELP committee, the Senior Senator from Tennessee Lamar Alexander and the Ranking Democratic Member, Senator Patty Murray, have an ability to work together on many issues. I know they're meeting almost as we speak, in five minutes, to discuss how we can move forward.
And I spoke to Senator Alexander in the gym and he seemed very eager to try and work together to stabilize the system.
Now, Mr. President, on another matter – taxes.
It’s clear that our economy would benefit from a bipartisan package of changes to our tax code that focused like a laser on increasing wages for working families, improving middle-class job growth, and promoting domestic investment, while modernizing our outdated business and international tax system.
From what we’ve heard from the White House so far, their plan wouldn’t do any of that.
We Democrats are open to a bipartisan discussion on those issues; but we also believe that, in an economy where wealth is seemingly funneled to the already-wealthy -- it’s working Americans who deserve tax relief, not those at the very top. The wealthiest Americans have seen outsized benefits from recent economic gains.
Now is not the time to shower millionaires and billionaires with another tax break while working Americans continue to struggle to make ends meet.
Today, 45 members of the Democratic caucus sent a letter to our Republican friends saying that we are open to bipartisan discussions on tax reform but we will not support any effort to rewrite the tax code to give another tax break to the top 1 percent or add even more to the deficit and debt.
Here are our principles outlined in the new letter: first, no new tax breaks for the top 1 percent, second, it must not increase the debt and be fiscally responsible; and third, we must use a regular order process that will ensure true bipartisan input in the product, not the reconciliation process used in healthcare which excluded Democrats from the get-go and in part led to the failure of the Republicans to pass repeal or repeal and replace.
Ramming tax cuts through under reconciliation—the very same partisan process that failed for health care—is the wrong way to do the business of the country.
So again, Democrats are open to a bipartisan discussion on tax reform, but it has to be truly bipartisan – not under reconciliation – and tax reform cannot be a cover story for delivering tax cuts to the wealthiest or result in a ballooning deficit and debt.
Finally, Mr. President, on the matter of China and North Korea.
Under President Trump, North Korea continues to ramp up its aggression, yet China has not taken any significant steps to bring to an end its threatening and destabilizing behavior.
President Trump has staked his administration’s approach to North Korea on China doing more, but right now, 90 percent of North Korea’s foreign trade is with China and 95 percent of its foreign direct investment comes from China.
Even as the UN Security Council and the United States Congress have again sanctioned North Korea, China’s trade with the rogue nation has risen more than 30 percent over the past year, according to some reports. Even after the recent ICBM tests – clear violations of international resolutions -- China and Russia have worked behind the scenes to water down and weaken additional UN Security Council sanctions resolutions.
President Trump has talked about his “wonderful relationship” with President Xi, but this is not the behavior we should expect from a partner that is serious about the crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
The bottom line is: China could put pressure on North Korea but right now they’re taking a pass as they have for over a decade.
President Trump began the year offering a “better trade deal” to China if they put pressure on North Korea. That clearly hasn’t happened. The soft-touch approach has gotten us nowhere. As usual with China, they only understand strength. China continues to do the bare minimum as North Korea becomes more and more bellicose.
So today I am urging President Trump to use his authority over the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and instruct the Treasury Department to suspend the approval of mergers and acquisitions of U.S. assets by Chinese companies until China works to bridle its neighbor’s aggression.
China and its surrogates must face economic pressure if they’re not going to help deter North Korea. This is an important tool in our country’s toolbox and the President ought to use it.
I urge President Trump to take a tougher line and suspend the approval of all mergers and acquisitions in the US by Chinese companies.
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