Schumer Floor Remarks on Healthcare, the Need for Bipartisanship on Tax Reform, and Urging Action Against China’s Trade Practices
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered remarks on the Senate floor regarding the need for bipartisanship in both improving our current healthcare system and the tax reform process as well as the need for President Trump to take action against China’s illegal trade practices.
Mr. President, first, on the topic of healthcare.
I was very happy to hear the statement from Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray yesterday in which they pledged the HELP committee to the task of stabilizing and strengthening the markets, particularly by guaranteeing the cost-sharing reduction program.
As Chairman Alexander said, that “without the payment of these cost-sharing reductions, Americans will be hurt.”
That is clear, everyone has said it—even the insurance companies.
And yet, President Trump continues to treat this critical program as if it’s some kind of political hostage.
Insurers in three states – North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Iowa – have each released separate sets of rates for 2018: one if the payments are made, and one that’s 20% higher if they are not.
In all three states, premiums will be 20% higher next year if President Trump refuses to carry out the law. Every American will see that increase in their monthly bill and know that it’s a Trump premium tax.
Insurers from coast to coast have said that uncertainty surrounding the cost-sharing reductions are the number one threat to the stability of the market. State insurance commissioners, many of them Republican, are announcing higher rates for next year and directly blaming the President’s failure to guarantee these payments, as the insurance commissioner of Idaho did yesterday.
We have enough problems in the world right now without President Trump creating entirely new ones out of political spite and a petty vindictiveness. When you lose politically, you don’t take it out on the American people. That’s not presidential. That’s just small.
So we would say to the President: stop holding this critical program as if it’s some kind of political hostage.
President Trump must stop the sabotage and make the payments this month so that Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray can get to work, in a bipartisan way, on a longer-term stabilization package.
And let me salute a large number of my Republican colleagues who agree that we have to do cost-sharing. They have realized that just sticking with President Trump, particularly when his motivations are not presidential but are sort of nasty, vindictive, is a bad idea. I salute them, because for the good of America, we have to work together.
Now, Mr. President, on another matter – taxes.
Yesterday, my friend the Majority Leader brought the curtain down on bipartisan tax reform before a discussion between our two parties could even start – dismissing the prospect of Democratic input, promising the Republicans would again use reconciliation to lock us out of the process.
Repeating the same mistake they did with healthcare.
His announcement came just a few hours after 45 members of the Democratic caucus sent him a letter saying we were open to bipartisan discussions on tax reform. We had three, simple, straightforward principles.
Let me read these principles: First, don't cut taxes for the 1%, the top 1%. They're doing fine, God bless them. Second, don't increase the debt and deficit, something many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been talking about for a long time. And third, negotiate in a fair and open process. Not reconciliation, but open amendments, the things that have made America great and have brought this Senate the acclaim over the decades that it has had.
Which of these principles does the Majority Leader not agree with? I’d like to know.
Is he closing the door on bipartisanship because he so dearly wants to cut taxes on the top 1%? The wealthy are doing great right now – God bless them – they don’t need another tax break while middle-class families and working Americans are struggling just to make ends meet.
And many of us on this side of the aisle, suspect that to some, that's the number-one motivation. Not tax reform, not closed loopholes, not clean up the system, but give that top 1% a huge tax break. To please so many like the Koch brothers. So, again, I'd ask the Leader, are you closing the door on bipartisanship simply because you want to cut taxes on the top 1%?
Or maybe the Leader is closing the door on bipartisanship because he has such a fervent desire to blow up the deficit? That sure doesn’t sound like something my Republican friends should be interested in, after years and years of deficit-scolding and debt-scolding.
Or is my friend from Kentucky—the Majority Leader—closing the door on bipartisanship simply because he thinks reconciliation, which means you exclude the Democrats from the get-go, is a good process for legislation?
Because he doesn't want to have amendments? And maybe it's the same reason on healthcare. Maybe they are ashamed of their proposal. I'd like to see somebody on the Republican side get up on the floor and say we believe in tax cuts for the top 1%. That's why we want to do this. But no, they want to hide it, cloak it, give a crumb to the middle class and say, see, we're helping you. And we all know that what happens after we have a big deficit, they come back and say now let's cut Social Security, now let's cut Medicare because we don't have the money, we don't have the money because they cut taxes on the rich, the very wealthy.
I honestly don’t know which of these three principles he is against. But when he closed the door on Democrats—when we sent him this letter which simply outlined our principles, that's all we wanted to do. Notice we agree on these three things, at least on our side.
Which one—or all of them—made him close the door?
We Democrats hoped we could work together on tax reform, but the Majority Leader has drawn down the curtain before the play has even begun. Republicans will spend the entire first year of this Congress trying to pass their agenda on reconciliation, without a shred of bipartisan input. Just like health care, I believe it will be another dead-end road for Republicans.
I’d remind the Majority Leader of his 2014 speech entitled “Restoring the Senate.” And I truly believe, I truly believe that Leader McConnell believes in the institution of the Senate. He has shown examples of that most recently when he said we don't want to change the rules despite President Trump pushing to do that. He said that “When the senate is allowed to work the way it was designed to, it arrives at a result acceptable to people all along the political spectrum. But if it's an assembly line for one party's partisan legislative agenda,” it creates “instability and strife” rather than “good, stable law.” That is the Majority Leader’s words. Well, if you believe that, my dear friend from Kentucky, then why are you instituting reconciliation, the exclusionary process before we even begin the debate? And why might the American people ask haven't you learned the lesson of healthcare, that that process doesn't work?
The American people want to see us try to work together. We may not always succeed. It may not be easy. It’s hard work. But we ought to try. This assembly line of reconciliation and partisan legislation—no Democratic input, no amendments—is not what any of us want to see, it’s not what the American people are calling out for, and it won’t produce “good, stable law.”
Again, I’d ask the Majority Leader to reconsider these three principles are probably supported by 80% of the American people. Why aren't our Republicans supporting them? Why are they running away from them?
Finally, Mr. President, on the issue of trade.
According to reports, the Trump Administration is preparing to open an investigation into China’s trade practices, focusing on economic espionage and the theft of intellectual property.
I certainly applaud the sentiment, I’ve been decrying for years how the Chinese have been taking advantage of us in a way that has sent trillions of dollars of American wealth to China and millions of jobs to China. So we should certainly go after them. The problem is, we don’t need another investigation to know what China is up to. It’s already very clear. That’s what the President called for, let’s investigate. Another investigation.
By dumping counterfeit and artificially cheap goods into our markets, denying US companies fair access to its markets, and relentlessly stealing and extorting the intellectual property of US companies, China has robbed the US economy of trillions of dollars of revenue and caused the loss of millions of US jobs.
Estimates by our own government – already made estimates – pin the cost of cyber espionage alone at $400 billion a year to the US economy, 90% of which comes from China’s government.
This is not a benign process. This is not some rogue company. This is the Chinese government.
Here’s what our retired four-star general Keith Alexander, the former director of the National Security Agency and Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, has called the loss of industrial information and IP through cyber theft “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.” The greatest transfer of wealth in our history. Mr. President, that pains me. This country, with its entrepreneurial vigor, with her acceptance of people from all corners of the globe for centuries, to go work hard and create good things, China's stealing it. They're not doing it on their own. Every American, when they hear that statement, it should make them cringe. It makes me cringe almost every day.
Those are the facts. So I would say to President Trump: We don’t need another study that takes months and months to complete while no action is taken.
And unfortunately, this is just like what the Trump Administration has done on the issue of steel and aluminum dumping. Somebody who has aluminum plants up there in his state in Alcoa, along Lake Ontario, now called Novellus, I know the issue of aluminum dumping. The President talks tough and tweets-tough on illegal steel dumping, but so far his administration has only been “reviewing” its effects on our economy. They failed to secure any deal with China in a number of forums, and they continue to delay on action that was promised in June.
Tough talk and tweets are cheap, strong and decisive action is required. American workers have waited too long for our country to crack down on abusive trade practices that have robbed our country of millions of good-paying jobs.
Today, Mr. President, I am proud to announce the Democratic Party will be laying out our new policy on trade, which includes among other things: an independent trade prosecutor to combat trade cheating—not one of these endless WTO processes which China takes advantage of over and over again—a new American Jobs Security Council that would be able to review and stop foreign acquisitions of US companies if it would likely have a detrimental effect on jobs, penalties for federal contractors that outsource jobs, stronger Buy America rules, and an outsourcing tax on companies that leave the US.
And on the issue of NAFTA re-negotiation, we are going to be laying out a set of tough principles that must be a bottom-line for any new NAFTA text. I voted against NAFTA in 1994. That was 23 years ago. We've seen how it has hurt us in so many ways. There have been some benefits, but overall the loss of jobs is painful. More jobs and higher wages must be our guiding principle. And it needs full transparency with workers and the public at the table, not just multinational corporations, who have dominated past trade negotiations.
So I hope the Administration—and I've always said, when I heard President Trump complain, that I'm closer to his views than I was to President Obama or President Bush—to work with us. These are good things we can do, saving jobs, good-paying jobs.
But I would say to the President: We don’t need another investigation or another study that languishes for months and months, we need strong, bold action on trade. And Democrats will offer those strong, bold ideas later this morning.
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