Schumer Floor Remarks on Government Funding Legislation and TrumpCare

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer delivered remarks on the Senate floor regarding fiscal year 2017 appropriations and the upcoming vote in the . Below are his remarks:

Yesterday afternoon the House approved the omnibus appropriations bill that will fund the government through September. The bill is the result of weeks and weeks of bipartisan, bicameral negotiations and the final product reflects the give and take of those negotiations. Again I want to thank the Majority Leader for all of his hard work and his desire to come to a good agreement, as well as the House leaders and the leadership of the Appropriations Committees. It’s proof to many that Washington can work when we work together.

In my view, the result is a very good bill for the American people.

Not only does it explicitly preclude funding for an unnecessary and ineffective border wall, it excludes over 160 poison pill riders, it increases investments in programs that the middle class relies on, like medical research, education, and infrastructure.

• The National Institutes of Health will get an additional $2 billion (part of the cancer moonshot);
• Pell Grants will be restored for over 1 million students
• Infrastructure programs (like CDBG and TIGER) will get an increase
• Programs to combat the terrible scourge of opioid abuse will receive an increase
• Clean energy research will receive an increase and 99% of the EPA’s budget was protected

And in addition, the bill includes:

• A permanent extension of miner’s health benefits, thanks to the hard work of Sen. Manchin and so many others
• Funding to shore up Puerto Rico’s Medicaid program
• And funding to help states like California, West Virginia, Louisiana, and North Carolina recover from natural disasters

And it has a very good increase for NASA which I will talk about at the end of my remarks before my colleague from Florida speaks about the hard and successful work he has done on the NASA budget.

Of course, the bill doesn’t include all of the things we wanted, it doesn’t include all of the things our Republican colleagues wanted. That is the nature of compromise. But at the end of the day, this is an agreement that reflects our basic principles – and is something both Democrats and Republicans should support.

The bill shows how bipartisanship in Congress should work: both parties negotiating in good faith in order to find consensus. It passed in the House with an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 309 votes and I expect it will receive the Senate’s approval later today. More broadly, I hope this deal provides a blueprint for future budget negotiations between our two parties here in Congress. If the four corners, the Senate, the House, Democrats and Republicans work as well on the 2018 as on the 2017 budget, we will have a product we can be proud of with no worries of a government shutdown.

Now, on healthcare, Mr. President.

As the House perhaps votes on their new version of TrumpCare, I want to remind the American people of a few things.

We are now on the second major attempt to pass TrumpCare. While all the focus in the media has been on the changes to the bill, we shouldn’t forget the bad things that stayed in the underlying bill. Under the new bill, as under the old:

• TrumpCare would mean that premiums go up 20% in the first few years, average costs could go up by over $1,500 a year on the middle class;
• It would mean that if you’re struggling to make it into the middle class (an income say around $30,000 a year), your costs could go up by 3 or $4,000
• Insurers could charge older Americans five times or even more now the amount as it charges younger folks. As much as it raises the hackles of the AARP, 54 through 64, this bill makes that worse.
• it would devastate Medicaid, a program covering 68 million Americans, and that affects poor people in the inner cities, but it also affects people in nursing homes and young men and women 45, 50 who have parents in nursing homes are going to have to face an awful choice – more money out of their pockets or their parents will have to find another place to live.
• It would still mean, worst of all, 24 million fewer Americans will have health insurance.

All those things stay the same. This change made by the House at the last minute doesn’t change any of those things. The same reason TrumpCare only got the support of 17% of the American people will mean that TrumpCare Two will have less support. And all the while, all these cuts end up with a massive tax break to the wealthiest Americans: those making over $250,000 a year, multimillionaires and billionaires. Even insurance executives who make over $500,000 a year get a tax break while middle class and older Americans get the short end of the stick. Here we are, telling average Americans they are going to get less coverage, pay more so we can give the multimillionaires a huge tax break. Who would be for that? As more and more Americans find out, the vote over there is going to be much less popular even that it is today – and it’s very unpopular today.

Seventeen percent of Americans liked the bill. It’s hard to get lower than that. But I think as people learn more and more about this bill, it will get even lower.

So the House Republicans have added an amendment that makes the bill even more cruel. It would allow states to opt-out of the requirement to cover folks with pre-existing conditions for the services they need. God forbid if you have a preexisting condition and you live in a state that doesn’t keep the requirement, your only option might be a poorly-subsidized high risk pool.

(Remember the scare tactic used against Obamacare, the “death panels?” They didn’t exist in Obamacare but they might in TrumpCare. These high-risk pools, with long lines, unaffordable coverage, are the real death panels).

That means an insurance company can charge an older American 5 times more than the amount under the current bill.

It would take us back to the days when insurance companies could price sick people out of insurance and drive older Americans to bankruptcy by charging outlandish rates.

That’s what House Republicans did to help the bill win more votes? It’s unfathomable.

We don’t even know how large, negative impact of these changes will be because we don’t have a CBO score. Does anyone imagine it will provide coverage for Americans with preexisting conditions?

I don’t think so.

That explains why the Republicans are rushing it through the House, with no hearings, no CBO score – this bill, they don’t want the American people to see this bill. The House Republicans were panicked, if they didn’t pass the bill today, their members would go home for two weeks and get beat up by their constituents who hate this bill and they would back off.

Seventeen percent of Americans, only 17% approved of TrumpCare. The rest of them packed town halls and public forums to demand that their Congressmembers reject it. They wrote and called, emailed and contacted their representatives on social media. It was the voices of average Americans who stopped TrumpCare, the first TrumpCare proposal, from even receiving a vote.

So now Republicans are trying to sneak through their second, even worse version of TrumpCare without debate. Maybe it raises costs on working Americans even more? Maybe it doubles the amount of uninsured Americans? The House won’t know before voting on the bill.

I sincerely hope the Senate won’t mimic the House and try to rush it through without hearings or debate or analysis.

Mr. President, regardless of the process, TrumpCare is just a breathtakingly irresponsible piece of legislation that would endanger the health of tens of millions of Americans and break the bank for millions more.

I don’t know what my friends in the House would say to their constituents if they vote for this bill.

What would you say to the 56 year old in your district, who is already struggling to balance the costs of medicine and rent and the groceries, when she has to pay more than 5 times as much for her health care than someone who’s 25 and healthy?

What would you say to the mother in your district whose daughter has cancer, and that insurance rates could be raised so high on her family that she couldn’t afford to get health insurance for her daughter – and would have to watch her suffer? The agony a parent would go through. What would you say to that mother?

I don’t know how any of my Republican colleagues here in the Senate – if we get this bill now in the House – can  explain why they voted to rip away people’s health care.

If there were a Hippocratic oath for Congress – “do no harm” – TrumpCare would never come up for a vote. It harms the American people in so many ways.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Republicans could drop these efforts for repeal, drop these attempts which are undermining our healthcare system and causing insurers to flee the marketplace, and work with Democrats. Our door is open.

I would make one final plea to my Republican friends in the House. I know they rarely listen to Senate leaders, especially Democratic ones, but this is an issue where so much is at stake that I hope they forget party labels for a moment.

I’d ask them to do what representatives should do…something very simple: think about your constituents, consult your conscience before you vote for this bill. I believe that if they truly do, and they consider what every independent expert and medical association is saying about what this bill will mean for our health care system, they’ll come to the right conclusion and vote “no” today.

Now on one final issue, Mr. President, seeing my friend from Florida about to take the floor – I’d like to yield to him in a moment, but before I do, I want to recognize his outstanding efforts in securing additional funding in the appropriations bill for NASA.

NASA had actually been targeted for certain cuts by the Trump Administration in their budget that would have nixed the program to send a mission to a moon of Jupiter.

But thanks to the advocacy of Sen. Nelson, NASA will get an increase of $368 million in the appropriations bill, enough to fund the mission.

I know this is dear to his heart -- as a young Congressman, he was second sitting member of Congress and the first member of the House to serve on a NASA mission (aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia).

He has a passion for and a deep knowledge of our space program. There is no one in the Senate who has done more for it than Bill Nelson. He’s worked hard ever since he’s gotten to the Senate and has had great, great success. Once again, he’s had a success here today. His constituents in Florida and all Americans should be grateful that Sen. Nelson is a real leader on both these issues, in our caucus and in the whole Senate.