Schumer Floor Remarks on President Trump’s Budget Proposal
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered remarks on the Senate floor outlining the effect President Trump’s budget would have on middle class and lower income Americans. Below are his remarks:
The President of the United States will release his 2018 budget this week. It could come as early as tomorrow, and all indications are that it will be similar to his “skinny budget” from earlier this year.
I want to remind everyone here in the Senate what a disaster that budget would be if it were ever implemented by this Congress.
The President told the American people he would help create jobs and provide greater economic security for families. This budget does exactly the opposite. It’s not a jobs budget. It’s not an economic security agenda.
It’s a budget that takes a meat cleaver to the middle class by gutting the programs that help them the most, including many that help create jobs and power the economy: transportation is cut, education is cut, programs that promote scientific and medical research are cut, programs that protect clean air and clean water are cut. All of these are favored – these programs are favored by a vast majority of my Republican friends across the aisle, but the President’s budget is an outlier – way out there. It fits with Mr. Mulvaney’s beliefs, because he was an outlier in the Congress when he called for the government to be shut down and when he wants to have the government play so little a role in helping the middle class, that it’s harmful to America.
And there’s another one that really is worrisome. Recent reports say that the president’s budget will target Medicaid for significant cuts -- as large as or larger than the $880 billion that House Republicans would cut in their Trumpcare bill.
This would pull the rug out from so many Americans who need help: those suffering from opioid and heroin addiction, people in nursing homes and their families who care for them, the elderly, the disabled, and children.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a cut to Medicaid of this size could deprive roughly 10 million Americans their Medicaid benefits over the next decade. Medicaid has always benefitted the poor. That’s a good thing. But I remind my colleagues that it has increasingly become a middle-class program. Medicaid provides benefits for 60% of Americans in nursing homes. What about a 40 or 50-year-old trying to raise their kids, saving for college and has a parent who needs to be in a nursing home? Right now, Medicaid pays for it. What are they going to do when that’s cut? They have two choices: shell a huge amount of money out of their own pocket, which they can’t afford, or maybe bring mom or dad back home, where there may be no room at home for them. What a horrible choice. What a horrible choice. Well, that’s what the President is proposing to do when he dramatically slashes Medicaid.
Listen to this, Mr. President and my colleagues: Medicaid helps 1.75 million veterans (1 in 10). It provides services for Americans struggling with opioid addiction, a problem that affects so many.
So if the reporting is accurate the cuts to Medicaid in the president’s budget carries a staggering human cost.
And once again, Donald Trump is breaking his promise to the working people of America. We have seen promise after promise just broken, as if they didn’t even matter. What he said in the campaign and what he governs as almost has no overlap in so many areas. Here’s what Candidate Trump said when he campaigned: “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.” He promised he would help take care of those suffering from opioid addiction. If it cuts Medicaid, he’s breaking that promise, right in half. Candidate Trump campaigned as a populist, said he wanted to help the working people, but since he has taken office he has governed like a hard-right conservative – pushing policies that help the uber wealthy at the expense of the middle class.
Many of my Republican friends come from states that have significantly expanded their Medicaid programs over the past few years, insuring hundreds of thousands – sometimes millions – of their constituents.
Based on what we know about this budget, the good news – the only good news – is that it’s likely to be roundly rejected by members of both parties here in the Senate – just as the last budget was.
We have shown that Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate, can come together to compromise on appropriations. We should follow the same blueprint we used in passing the 2017 funding bill in passing the 2018 bill. We should ignore the president’s budget, which would devastate the middle class, and instead work across the aisle to advance reasonable, compromise legislation later this year.
