Schumer Floor Remarks on President Trump’s Populist Rhetoric, the GOP Effort to Repeal the Affordable Care Act, and the Withdrawal of the Nominee for Secretary of the Navy
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today delivered remarks on the Senate floor discussing President Trump’s populist rhetoric, the GOP effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and the withdrawal of the nominee for Secretary of the Navy. Below are his remarks:
Mr. President, I welcome the majority leader and everyone back after the first district work period of the year.
Tomorrow night, the President will give his first address to a joint session of Congress. I’ll have more to say later this afternoon at the National Press Club about the first month of the Trump Administration and what we can expect from his speech.
But for now I’ll just say that if past is prologue, the President will come to Congress with a populist message in an attempt to cloak what has been a hard-right, anti-working person Administration.
His words are populist; he talks like he favors the working men and women of America, but his actions are straight out of the hard right playbook – which makes it easier for the special interests, and puts greater burdens on the backs of working people and the middle class.
Every American should be looking at what this President is doing, not saying…because, thus far, the two have been vastly different.
Now, for the ACA, Mr. President,
This past week, Republicans across the country in both chambers were greeted in town halls by angry constituents who waited in long lines and packed high school gyms, auditoriums and community centers wall-to-wall to question their Republican representatives about their plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Americans are speaking loudly and clearly that their jobs, hospitals, particularly rural hospitals, and their health care are on the line – and want to know how Republicans actually plan to replace the law.
Well, on Friday, we saw the outline of the Republican “plan.” Like every single draft “plan” that Republicans have come up: the outline we saw on Friday will raise costs and provide fewer benefits to average Americans, and put the insurance companies back in the driver’s seat. Average Americans under this Republican plan will get less and they’ll pay more.
Today, President Trump is meeting with the insurance companies about this plan. What happened to the president we saw on the campaign trail railing against the special interests? Turns out, the special interests are getting their way at the expense of working Americans – less coverage, higher premiums, fewer sick people insured.
My Republicans friends should listen to the outcry from their constituents. Don’t repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a threadbare health insurance plan that puts insurance companies back in charge. Keep the law and work with Democrats on reasonable fixes.
Finally, Mr. President, I want to comment again on the cabinet.
The three nominees that the Senate will consider this week are similar to the rest of President Trump’s cabinet in the number of conflicts of interest they possess, in their lack of competence and expertise, and their hard-right ideology.
The cabinet confirmation process has been like an assembly line of the least qualified and most conflicted nominees I’ve seen in my time here in the Senate.
Just yesterday, the nominee to be the Secretary of the Navy withdrew his name from consideration because he couldn’t disentangle himself from his massive personal business interests.
He may have had more integrity than some of the others who continued through the process with conflicts hanging over their heads.
He is one of 14 relatively high-level administration officials who have left, resigned, or withdrawn their nomination in just the first month of this Presidency. That list includes the nominee for Secretary of Labor, the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Navy, and the principal National Security Advisory.
Mr. President, it is clear that the Trump Administration did not properly vet or carefully select these picks. With that in mind, the Senate should carefully scrutinize the nominees this week on the floor and vote their conscience.
Thank you, Mr. President.
