Schumer Floor Remarks on ‘Mean’ GOP Healthcare Bill
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered remarks on the Senate floor regarding the ‘mean’ GOP healthcare bill that Senate Republicans are crafting behind closed doors. Below are his remarks:
Mr. President, I listened to the Majority Leader this morning say that Obamacare was collapsing and Republicans are on a rescue mission. Honestly, the gall it must take to say that, after Republicans and President Trump have spent all year sabotaging the marketplace. They’ve threatened to stop critical cost-sharing payments which help keep deductibles and premiums down, hurting millions of people and sowing uncertainty in the market.
There’s an easy way to fix it. Instead of crying crocodile tears, Republicans should guarantee the cost sharing payments will be made. And that’s not just Democrats saying it, that’s the insurers – listen to the insurers. What do they want to keep premiums down and keep them from leaving the exchanges? They want cost-sharing, which our Republican colleagues refuse to do, and then in a cynical ploy, try to blame Obamacare.
Listen to AHIP – that’s the nation’s largest trade group of insurers, its nonpartisan, it’s a business group – listen to what they said about the uncertainty about the cost-sharing payments. They said it was “the single most destabilizing factor in the individual market.” A series of insurance companies, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Anthem, have said – explicitly – that uncertainty caused by President Trump and Republicans about cost-sharing is causing them to pull out of certain markets. So this idea, this cynical ploy -- after sabotaging the bill -- then blaming someone else other than themselves. It’s pitiful.
The house bill was so bad of course, Trumpcare was so bad, our Republican friends are trying to switch the blame to Obamacare. It’s not true. It won’t work.
Now, Mr. President, last night, Democrats held the floor well into the night to discuss the Republican plan to pass a healthcare bill that no one in America has seen, in just two short weeks, without holding a single committee hearing or a robust debate on the floor. They want to bring the bill to the floor, rush it in the dark of night, for a simple reason – they are ashamed of their bill. They don’t want anybody to see it, least of all the public.
Last evening, I asked the Majority Leader if the minority would have more than 10 hours to debate and amend the final bill. He replied: “there will be ample opportunity to debate and amend the bill.” So I asked again, “will we get more than 10 hours?” which is the maximum the rules allow us under reconciliation. He could only reply, “There will be ample time.”
I have a feeling the Majority Leader and I disagree on the definition of “ample.” Because 10 hours of debate time on an issue this important is a sham; it's a farce. We'd have to read the bill, prepare amendments, consider its consequences, all in 10 hours. This is a bill that affects a sixth of our economy, millions of Americans – for them its life and death, and we’re supposed to rush it through.
The Affordable Care Act, for the sake of comparison, was debated for 25 consecutive days of Senate session and 169 cumulative hours of debate time - and that was after a robust hearing and committee process. Yesterday, the Majority Leader basically confirmed that we Democrats might only have 10 hours TOTAL. No committee hearings, no committee markups, no airing the bill, 10 hours of debate. Can you believe it? This is supposed to be a democracy where we debate the greatest issues of our time.
I’d ask another question of the Majority Leader, and I’d ask him now I hope he’ll answer it: will our 10 hours of debate time be on House bill or will they be on the new Senate bill that he’s crafting behind closed doors? Will he let us debate the full 10 hours on the new Senate bill, hardly enough, or is he even being more cynical and doing the 10 hours of debate on the existing house bill and then putting a substitute in – the Senate bill they’ve written behind closed doors – and have no debate on that? With everything terrible that’s happening, that would make it even worse. So I’m asking the Majority Leader to publicly state what his plan is in that regard.
I've never heard of a more radical or a more reckless process in my entire career in politics…10 hours of total debate on a bill that would affect one sixth of the American economy and millions of Americans lives.
If the Senate bill, like the House bill, results in 23 million Americans losing their insurance: each hour of debate time would represent 2.3 million Americans losing their insurance. Each minute of debate time would represent nearly 40,000 Americans losing their insurance. One minute and 40,000 people’s lives are changed, 40,000 people don’t have the coverage they need.
It boggles the mind that the Republican leader is moving forward this way, without letting anyone but members of the Republican Senate caucus see the bill. And even many of them have said they haven't seen it.
There’s only one possible reason why my friends on the other side are going along with this process, only one reason: they are ashamed of the bill they're writing. If they were proud of the bill they would announce it. They would have brass bands going down Main St. America saying look at our bill. They can’t even whisper what it’s about they are so, so ashamed of it.
That’s why they're hiding it. They must be ashamed that, just like the House bill, the Senate Trumpcare bill will put healthcare out of reach for millions of Americans just to put a another tax break into the pockets of the very, very wealthy.
You know, President Trump likes to end many of his tweets with one word, almost like punctuation. Sad! Unfair! Wrong! It turns out that the President has one word to sum up his healthcare plan as well: MEAN!
Last week, at the White House at a lunch with Republican Senators, the President reportedly told them that he thought the House-passed healthcare bill was “MEAN.” That’s what Donald Trump said on June 13, 2017.
For once, on the topic of healthcare, I find myself agreeing with the President.
His healthcare bill is mean. Cutting Medicaid to the bone is mean. Cutting treatment for opioid abuse is mean. Cutting support for families with someone in a nursing home is mean. Allowing insurers to once again discriminate against Americans with preexisting conditions is mean. Charging older Americans five times or more for their health insurance is mean.
Passing a law that would cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance in order to give a tax break to the wealthiest among us is pretty much the textbook definition of a mean bill, a mean bill.
Even the President thinks so.
But just like the Republicans in the Senate, President Trump doesn't want the American people to know what he really thinks of their healthcare plan. That's why he said it was "MEAN" behind closed doors at the White House, while in public a few weeks earlier he said it’s "a great plan"..."very, very incredibly well-crafted." Those are his words, same bill. Out to the public, ‘great bill, great plan.’ Behind closed doors, what it really is – “mean.”
All those plaudits the President gave the House bill turned out to be flimsy salesmanship. Speaking candidly to fellow Republicans, the President didn't say "take up and pass the House bill." He didn't say it was a "great plan" or that it was "very, very incredibly well crafted." He said it was “MEAN.”
My Republican friends ought to take this to heart. Even President Trump thinks what Republicans are doing on healthcare is a cruelty to the American people.
As we on this side of the aisle have said before, there is a better way. The Republicans shouldn't feel like this mean bill, cooked up in secret, is their only option. I've invited my Republican friends to meet in the Old Senate Chamber to discuss a bipartisan way forward on healthcare. The Republican Leader seems to have foreclosed that option, but the invitation remains, and the sentiment remains.
Democrats are willing to work with our Republican friends on improving our healthcare system. We have significant disagreements, sure, but Republicans haven't even tried to sit down with us and hash them out. We'd like to try.
But if the Republicans continue down this path, ignoring the principles of transparency and the open debate that define this legislative body, we Democrats will continue to do everything we can to shine a light on what our Republican friends are doing.
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