Schumer Floor Remarks on Healthcare, President Trump’s Bilateral Meeting with Putin and Latest in Russia Investigation, & the Slow Pace of Cabinet Nominations

 Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor regarding healthcare, President Trump’s bilateral meeting with Putin, the latest in the Russia Investigation, and the slow pace of cabinet nominations. Below are his remarks:

Mr. President, as Senators continue to return from the state work period, we return here in the Senate to the topic of healthcare, which everyone in America should continue to focus on.

Even after a week of work, it seems my friends on the other side are no closer to having enough votes to proceed to their bill. Which of course they insisted on doing with no Democratic votes or input.

The biggest challenge proposed to the legislation during the break was an amendment offered by the Junior Senator from Texas that would remove crucial protections for sicker Americans and unbalance the marketplace. The Cruz amendment is a hoax.

Under the guise of lowering premiums, the Cruz amendment would actually make healthcare more expensive, because deductibles and copayments would be so onerous that many Americans would pay more – not less – in out-of-pocket expenses than they pay today.

These lower-premium policies will have such high deductibles and copays that the policy itself would be virtually worthless.

Imagine you have a $2,000 premiums and $1,000 deductible in your policy. Imagine now that, under the Cruz amendment, an insurance company is allowed to offer a cheaper policy because they aren’t required to cover very many services. That policy might have a premium of $1,000, but a deductible of $10,000. You’d be paying less monthly, but you’d have to put down a huge amount of money for your policy to even kick in.

In that way, a ‘Cruz insurance policy’ is worse than no policy at all – because the vast majority would pay a monthly premium and never hit their deductible, so they’d be getting no health insurance benefit at all. You pay the premium, but the deductible is so high, insurance never kicks in. What good is that?

In effect, for many, it’s a policy that would have a premium, but no insurance.

In addition, Americans with pre-existing conditions will almost certainly be left without access to affordable and quality health care – making the Senate bill even meaner than the House bill on this issue. Even the Republican Senator from Iowa, Sen. Grassley, said about the Cruz amendment that,  “There’s a real feeling that [it’s] subterfuge” – his words not mine – “to get around pre-existing conditions…If it has the effect of annihilating the pre-existing condition requirement that we have in the existing bill, than obviously I would object to that.” Those are the words of Senator Grassley.                                               

Members of both parties agree that the most significant potential change to the Republican Trumpcare bill is an amendment that would make the legislation even worse. Make no mistake about it, the Cruz amendment is a cruel, mean, hoax.

Let’s not forget, even without the Cruz amendment, the substance of the base Senate Republican bill is devastating. The CBO reports that it would cause costs to go up, care to go down, and force 22 million Americans off their health insurance. It would end Medicaid as we know it.

Now this weekend, I went to the Utica boilermaker, a famous road race in my dad’s hometown, 15k race, it’s the largest in the country. People from 45 states participate. And as usual I walked through the crowd afterwards congratulating people on a great race. They were sweaty, but they were happy. And I came upon three men in wheelchairs, here they are. Just after they crossed the finish line, the first thing they said to me was “Senator, please protect Medicaid, we’d be lost without it.” 

These were proud men, and they deserved to be proud for finishing a difficult race made even harder by their disability. They could be forgiven for taking a moment to celebrate. But instead they wheeled up to me to talk about how important Medicaid was to them. These are not slackers. They wouldn’t be in a race like this if they were. But they needed some help. They’re disabled. We’re going to take away their Medicaid? So we can give tax breaks to the wealthiest people in America. I hope not.         

These folks know that Medicaid is a lifesaver for Americans with disabilities and they want it maintained and strengthened – not dismantled so Republicans can give another tax break to the very wealthy.   

These three should remind everyone that dismantling Medicaid is the wrong way to go.

It’s time to move on from the failing, Republican-only approach and start over, in a bipartisan way, on healthcare.

Republican leadership has been trying to cajole their members into voting for this bill by saying that if Republicans fail to pass this bill, they’ll have to work with Democrats. Republican leadership is not telling their members: vote for this bill because it’s a good bill. No – they’re saying vote for this bill or you’ll have to work with Democrats.

When you can’t defend the substance of the bill at all, it’s time to move on. When using bipartisanship as a threat is your only argument, it’s time to move on.

My Republican friends should not be so afraid of working with we Democrats that they’re bullied into supporting a terrible bill. The U.S. Senate, we all know this, was intended as a forge for bipartisan consensus, a cooling saucer, as the founding fathers said. In the Senate, bipartisanship should be the first option, not the last resort.

I repeat, We Democrats are willing to work, we’re ready to work with our Republican colleagues on healthcare. So today, Democratic leadership sent a letter to my friend the Majority Leader again offering to work with him on specific legislation to stabilize the marketplaces and improve the quality and lower the cost of care.

The Majority Leader said over the break that he may be forced to work with Democrats to stabilize the marketplaces. Democrats say: let’s do it. Let’s do it now.

So we sent the Majority Leader four specific proposals, led by Senator Shaheen’s amendment to guarantee cost-sharing reduction payments – the most important thing we can do to stabilize the marketplace and even lower premiums for many right now. Whatever your views on healthcare, we should agree that we need to stabilize the marketplaces. So I look forward to a response from the Majority Leader to our letter.

When will my Republican friends realize that their partisan approach to healthcare is a dead end? That the only way to truly improve our nation’s health care system is to finally heed Democrats’ requests to come together and work in a bipartisan way?

I hope the Republicans realize it sooner not later.

Now, Mr. President, on another matter, the G20 and President Trump’s bilateral meeting with President Putin.

While a few good things came out of this summit, overall it was an embarrassment to our country and our ideals. Clearly the lowest moment of all was President Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin, on several counts.

As our Intelligence Community has concluded, the President of Russia deliberately interfered in our elections and sought to undermine our democracy. That’s not Democrats making it up. 17 intelligence agencies, men and women, many of whom risk their lives for us every day. People we look up to, people we admire, they’re the ones who said there was interference. Not democrats, not politicians. I wish President Trump would stop saying it was Democrats who came up with this idea. It was his own intelligence, our own intelligence community. Rather than decisively confront the Russian President on these actions, the Russian interference, the President reportedly acquiesced to Putin's denial.

To give equal credence to the findings of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies and an assertion by Mr. Putin is disgraceful. They are not equal. Our 17 intelligence agencies are far more important to us, and far more credible to us than Vladimir Putin. Every American, every American no matter your party affiliation, should take umbrage at the President of the United States equating our own, hardworking, dedicated intelligence community with Mr. Putin, who has shown contempt for our democracy and spent his professional and political career trying to undermine it.

This almost certainly paves the way, the President’s actions almost certainly pave the way for future Russian interference in our elections. If Russia feels that there will be no punishment, no reprimand at all from the United States for interfering in our elections, surely they will try and try again.

Now, President Trump went so far as to float the absolutely absurd possibility of a joint cyber security unit with the Russians.  Then he backtracked, after he was hailing it as one of the great things about the summit. But when he got such reaction, particularly from Senators McCain and Rubio, his own party, he backtracked. The thought of working with our adversary on cyber security should send chills down the backs of all Americans.    

It’s clear that President Trump is not willing to be the guardian of American interests when it comes to Vladimir Putin. The House of Representatives must step in and fill that void by passing the Senate’s tough, bipartisan sanctions bill to finally punish Russia for their intrusion in our 2016 elections.

The Founding Fathers established Congress as a check and balance on the executive branch when necessary. The House must be that check and balance now.  

And Given President Trump’s actions at the G20, there is now even more reason for the House to pass the Senate sanctions bill, which of course, passed 98-2 overwhelmingly bipartisanly.

Given President Trump’s casual dismissal of the findings of our Intelligence Community and face-value acceptance of Mr. Putin’s word, there is even greater cause to tie the hands of this Administration with a tough Russia sanctions bill.

Now more than ever, it’s clear that President Trump should not have the final and only authority to lift sanctions on Russia. He has shown he is willing to turn a blind eye to a direct assault on our democracy, and did so this weekend in his meeting with Mr. Putin.

So Congress should step up and say: President Trump, if you’re not going to punish Russia for meddling with our democracy, we will.

The American people are wondering, how can the President of the United States fail to stick up for our democracy? How can the President fail to seriously challenge the man responsible for violating the sanctity of our elections?

And Mr. President, candidly, I am dismayed that the Republican leadership, in this body and the other, has been so quiet in the wake of these events. The Republican Party’s foreign policy for decades was predicated on opposition to the Soviet Union and now Russia. It was the lynchpin of their foreign policy. But now, when a President of their party is soft on Russia – even after Russia blatantly interfered in our elections – we hardly hear a peep from the Republican leadership.

I certainly acknowledge and respect the words of my friends Republican Senators McCain and Graham and Sasse and Rubio, who have spoken out and should be recognized and applauded for it. But they have been the exception, not the rule. We need to hear more from Republican leadership, because the situation is getting ever more troubling.

Now, Mr. President, a word on the revelation that President Trump’s son, his son-in-law, and his campaign manager met with a lawyer with ties to the Kremlin with the pretext of discussing information that would be damaging to Secretary Clinton’s campaign.

This revelation should be the end of the idea pushed by the Administration and by the President that there is absolutely no evidence of an intent by the Trump campaign to coordinate or collude. It is certainly not proof positive – we don’t know what was said in the meeting -- but these reports in the press at least demand further investigation.

It defies credulity that the President’s campaign manager, his son, and his son-in-law, at the height of a very very heated campaign – three people very close to the President and at the helm of his campaign – were all going to a meeting with a Russian lawyer to discuss Russian adoption.

And indeed, Donald Trump Jr. has now admitted, after he first said the purpose of the meeting was adoption that he agreed to the meeting to get potentially damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has already indicated that it will look into the possibility of coordination or collusion as a part of their broader investigation. This meeting and the background behind it should be included in future document requests and additional lines of inquiry.

After providing documents to the intelligence committees, Donald Trump Jr. must also testify before the committee to explain why three of the highest-level members of the Trump administration thought it was appropriate to meet with a Russian source to receive information about a political opponent.

We are talking about the wellspring and pride of our democracy – free and fair elections without foreign interference.

When the President of the United States is unwilling to forcibly defend our democracy, a violation of our sovereignty, face to face with its chief adversary; when we continue to learn of additional meetings between his campaign and Russian sources; when we hear that the White House is actively working to water down or stall a bill of tough Russia sanctions – we in Congress need to step up and defend the vital interests of our country. And both parties should be united in that effort.

Because, at least for now, the President seems unwilling to do so.

And finally, on nominations which was just mentioned in a non-camera briefing at the White House.

I understand the White House is complaining about the pace of nominations, citing the obstruction of Senate Democrats. But if the White House is looking for the cause of the delay, they need only look in the mirror.

No administration in recent memory has been slower in sending nominees to the Senate. In the last few weeks, the Administration has sent several nominees without all of their paperwork or ethics agreement complete, we can’t go forward until that happens.

The White House has sent nominees for cabinet on down without all their paperwork or ethics agreements completed that’s almost unprecedented in its degree. Time and time again they have stalled on providing committees with the information they need to proceed on nominations.

After campaigning on “draining the swamp,” the Trump Administration has sent the Senate a slew of nominees with myriad conflicts-of-interest and ethics entanglements. It is our duty in the Senate to vet these nominees properly, because the American people are entitled to ethical government.

And yet, the White House blames the delay on obstruction in the Senate.

It’s typical of the Trump Administration: do something wrong and then blame someone else for your problem.

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