Ranking Member DeLauro House Floor Remarks Opposing Republican Health Care Crisis
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WASHINGTON — House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) delivered the following remarks on the House Floor in opposition to the Republican plan to allow health care costs to skyrocket for over 20 million Americans:
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I yield myself 7 minutes.
I rise in opposition to this bill that does nothing – not one thing – to address the Republican health care crisis amid a cost-of-living crisis.
More than 20 million Americans will have to pay double, even triple their monthly insurance premiums in just a matter of weeks. And this bill leaves families without even a glimmer of hope that their costs might go down.
Energy prices are up. Grocery prices are up. Housing costs are up. When two-thirds of American workers are living paycheck-to-paycheck, you can understand why the most important issue on their minds is affordability. What does President Trump say? And I quote, “Affordability is a con-job.” How out of touch can you be? Mr. President, start to listen to the American people, not your millionaire, billionaire friends.
President Trump and my Republican colleagues refuse to address this issue. They continue to avoid it. They were so intent on avoiding it that they shut down the government instead of dealing with it.
Speaker Johnson has indicated that he will not deal with it. He has shown no interest in holding a vote on extending the health care subsidies, which would prevent monthly costs from soaring.
Republicans have tried to say they will deal with this problem their own way, but they have no plan. They are trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act – as they have been trying to do unsuccessfully for 15 years. However, they are poised to succeed, which is why it is so important for this continuing resolution to fail.
President Trump and Republicans, their plan is to drive up prices for everybody, compounding the cost-of-living crisis. More than two million Americans are expected to lose their health insurance next year because it has simply become too expensive.
There are more than 50 pages of health care provisions in this bill. Not one of them stops costs from skyrocketing at the beginning of next year. Not one of them offers relief to American families being squeezed tighter and tighter by the Republican crisis.
There is one group of people, however, who will receive some relief thanks to this bill: United States Senators who may have participated in an insurrection.
Snuck into this bill at the eleventh hour, by Senate Republicans is a provision to pay out at least $1 million, each, to eight U.S. Senators implicated in the January 6 insurrection. Understand: This is a corrupt precedent; this is where members can profit from their own votes. It’s the fleecing of the American people – which they get an understand.
At the same time, this bill excludes a provision that would order a plaque to be hung that honors the police officers who put their lives on the line to defend our democracy from that same insurrection. What a contrast.
It is yet another instance of this administration’s shameless corruption that is financially ruining American families. While there is $230 million for the president to pay himself from the Department of Justice, $8 million for some of his closest Senate allies, and $200 million for a pair of private jets for the Department of Homeland Security Secretary - $40 billion to Argentina – the American people are left with nothing but higher costs.
This bill also fails to fully cover the Toxic Exposures Fund, which was created to support veterans exposed to burn pits and Agent Orange. We made a promise to stand by the men and women who served our country in uniform. This bill does not live up to that promise. Republicans need to stop taking photographs with veterans and then vote against their health care.
Those who lead in appropriations process here believe in the constitutional power of the purse.
Over the past month, President Trump has been firing federal workers en masse, and when his administration has failed there, they have made life so miserable for federal workers that they had no choice but to leave.
Federal workers should be “Traumatically affected,” those are the words of the Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought. An unelected bureaucrat. The federal workforce has dwindled by 200,000 since January, jeopardizing the public services that so many people rely on. Spare us your false concern.
And since January, this administration has been stealing from our communities, withholding as much as $410 billion in funding approved by Democrats and Republicans - House, Senate, signed into law - and they are illegally blocking authorized funds from being distributed.
Even now, as we debate this bill, the Trump administration is arguing to the Supreme Court that they should be allowed to withhold food stamp funding that Congress lawfully approved. They were ordered by three separate courts to distribute food assistance and are still fighting to withhold it.
It is not connected to opening this government. They have the money, they have it now for food stamps. They just refuse to use it. Imagine using food as a political weapon. Unspeakable and immoral.
It seems like their only plan is to strip children of food assistance while kicking their parents off their health insurance. They have demonstrated that that is who they are. These are their true colors.
You cannot expect Democrats to go along with any bipartisan funding deal if that agreement can be undone with a party-line vote. Congress must assert its authority over the power of the purse. I encourage my colleagues to vote NO.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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