Schumer Floor Remarks on Chairman Nunes, the Failure of TrumpCare, and Tax Reform

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered remarks on the Senate floor regarding the need to replace Rep. Nunes as Chairman of the House Intelligent Committee, the GOP’s failure to pass TrumpCare and tax reform. Below are his remarks:

Mr. President, I rise this afternoon on a few topics. First, on the investigation into the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia.

This a matter of such gravity that we need to get it right. There should be no doubt about the integrity and impartiality of the investigation: either in the executive branch, where the FBI and DOJ are looking into it, or in Congress, where the Intelligence Committees of both chambers are conducting an investigation.

Unfortunately, the House Intelligence Committee has come under a cloud of suspicion and partisanship.

A few months ago, Chairman Nunes spoke to reporters at the request of the White House to tamp down stories on the links between the Trump campaign and Russia – which is exactly what his committee must now investigate.

This past week, Chairman Nunes broke with committee process and tradition to brief the president on information he learned but hadn’t yet shared with the Committee. Now we learn this morning that Chairman Nunes was at the White House a day before that event. Doing what? We don’t know.

Mr. President, it could very well be the case that Chairman Nunes was briefing members of the Administration about an investigation of which they are the subject.

Chairman Nunes is falling down on the job and seems to be more interested in protecting the President than in seeking the truth.

You cannot have the person in charge of an impartial investigation be partial to one side: it’s an inherent contradiction.

And it undermines decades of bi-partisan cooperation on the Intelligence committee, which handles such sensitive information paramount to national security; it undermines Congress as a co-equal branch of government, meant to hold the executive branch accountable for its actions; and it corrodes the American people’s confidence in our government.

Mr. President, if Speaker Ryan wants the House to have a credible investigation, he needs to replace Chairman Nunes.

Congress was meant by the framers to be separate and equal…and I sincerely worry that under his direction, Mr. Nunes is pushing the committee in a direction of obsequiousness, and not one that is asking the hard questions and getting the important answers.

There’s always been a grand tradition of bipartisanship on the intelligence committees. When Members go into the SCIF, the room where they get secure briefings, they check their partisanship at the door. Chairman Nunes is right on the edge of doing permanent damage to that great tradition of bipartisanship.

Chairman Nunes seems to be more of a partisan for the President than an impartial actor. He has not been operating like someone who is interested in getting to the unvarnished truth. His actions look like those of someone who is interested in protecting the President and his party. That doesn’t work when the goal of the committee is to investigate Russia and its connection to the President and his campaign.

Without further ado, Speaker Ryan should replace Chairman Nunes.

Now, Mr. President, on another matter – the failure of Trumpcare. This past Friday was a good day for the American people. We can finally put to bed the disaster of a bill that was Trumpcare, which would have resulted in:

• Spottier coverage
• 24 million fewer Americans with health coverage
• And higher costs, premiums and deductibles for the middle class, the working poor, and older Americans – all to finance close to $600 billion in tax breaks for wealthy Americans

Americans should breathe a sigh of relief that Trumpcare will not become law. We are happy that it is gone and we can finally move on.

As I’ve said many times, we Democrats -- provided our Republican colleagues drop replace and stop undermining the ACA – are willing to work with our Republican friends to improve the existing law. No one ever said the Affordable Care Act was perfect. We have ideas to improve it; hopefully our colleagues on the Republican side do as well. I hope, once replace is dropped and the ACA is no longer undermined by the Administration, we can sit down and talk about them.

But the Administration has already done several things that undermine the law and hurt people. During the final weeks of open enrollment, the Trump Administration discontinued the public advertising campaigns that encouraged people to sign up for insurance. The Administration is working behind the scenes to give insurers “flexibility” to offer Americans less coverage for the health care they need. And the executive order that President Trump issued directing agencies to facilitate the repeal and replacement of the ACA has destabilized the marketplace. Now that Trumpcare is off the table, the President should rescind the Executive order.

Today, I am urging the President and his entire Administration to immediately cease all efforts to undermine the ACA.  People’s lives are at stake.

The president should not hope that the health care system for tens of millions of Americans “explodes.” He should not want premiums to go up on his watch. He should not hope that Americans lose treatment for opioid addiction on his watch.

This approach is wrong, and wrong in two ways. First and foremost, it is wrong because it hurts people. The president must be a leader. It is not leadership for the president to hurt people and actively work to undermine our nation’s health care system simply because he’s angry that he didn’t get his way on repealing the ACA. That’s not presidential, that’s petulance.

And secondly, this approach won’t work politically. Donald Trump is no longer an outsider – he’s president. The American people are looking to him to help solve their problems. If he doesn’t, it’s going to hurt him and his party.

Pointing the finger of blame isn’t going to solve anyone’s problems. That strategy is not only bad for the American people and beneath the presidency, it will backfire politically.

He’s in charge. People want him to make their lives better, no make them worse because of some political anger or vendetta. Now I know many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do care deeply about fixing our nation’s health care problems. And we are ready to do that with them, in a bipartisan way. But, of course, repeal must be taken off the table, and the president must stop hurting citizens by undermining the Affordable Care Act.

Finally, on tax issues. Mr. President, now that the jig is finally up on health care, Republicans have signaled they will turn to taxes.

I hope they have learned the lessons of Trumpcare. One of the reasons that Trumpcare failed so spectacularly was because Republicans tried to rush and ram it through via a reconciliation process, even though it was deeply unpopular with the public. The last poll showed only 17 percent of Americans supported Trumpcare, so that means even a large number of Trump supporters were opposed to it.

Why was it so unpopular? Probably because TrumpCare would have given the wealthiest among us a monster tax cut while hammering older Americans and the middle class with higher costs for less care.                                       

So I would say to my friends on the other side: if you try to pass a Republican tax plan using the same reconciliation method in order to get a huge tax break for the wealthy and already profitable and powerful corporations – it will fail.                                                

The American people are not crying out for tax breaks on the wealthiest Americans – god bless the wealthy, they’re doing just fine without the tax breaks.

But thus far, it seems that Republicans are headed in that direction.

Even though the president campaigned as a populist, his Administration has been all hard-right – pro-corporate, pro-special interest, totally against the working people. If the president and Republicans in Congress continue in that direction -- proposing policies that shift burdens off the wealthy and powerful, and not aimed to help the middle class and working families -- their efforts will continue to fail.

And it will turn tax reform into a partisan issue. The White House says tax reform isn’t partisan. But it surely will be if they only propose massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

And my prediction -- if Republicans go down that road, the Republican tax scheme will meet the same fate as TrumpCare.                                    

I hope they won’t go down that road. I hope they won’t.