Pramila Jayapal Sounds Off On 'Cruel' Legislation Included In Trump, GOP's Reconciliation Package

Forbes Breaking News

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Pramila Japayal (D-WA) spoke in opposition to many of the underlying bills included in the GOP reconciliation process.

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the 100 days since taking office, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their

00:05Department of Greed and Ego have taken a literal chainsaw to our government, eliminating and

00:11threatening programs that help people in every corner of this country, both red and blue.

00:17Trump's policies are destroying the strong economy that he inherited from Democrats. In the last

00:23quarter of 2024, our economy grew by 2.4 percent. But in just the first 100 days of Trump's

00:30administration, our economy has shrunk by 0.3 percent. It is the worst quarter we've experienced

00:38since 2022. And it's no surprise that Americans' confidence in our economy has dropped for the

00:44fifth month in a row and is at its lowest level since the start of the COVID pandemic. 100 days

00:50of anxiety, chaos, and complete destruction. The bill that we're marking up today will not

00:56stem the tide. It's a betrayal of the middle class, and it's going to destroy the infrastructure

01:01that every American depends on. Millions of children, low-income seniors, and people with

01:06disabilities will become uninsured and see their health costs dramatically increase. The bill

01:12includes at minimum $880 billion of cuts to Medicaid. And let's be clear, this isn't a red

01:19state or a blue state issue. One in three Americans depend on Medicaid for their health

01:24coverage. We're talking about nursing homes for five out of eight seniors and stealing

01:29health care from 38 million kids across the country. That's over 800,000 kids in my home

01:35state, over 3 million kids in Texas, and about 1.2 million kids in Ohio. It's just cruel.

01:43Now, remember when Trump said he'd lower costs for Americans? This bill would cut crucial food

01:49assistance by at least 20 percent. Never mind that four out of five households that rely on SNAP

01:55have a child, a senior, or a person with disability. And what we're considering today in this committee

02:01would make things even worse when it comes to our ability to lower prices. This bill would eliminate

02:08the Federal Trade Commission, an agency tasked with protecting consumers and promoting competition.

02:13Just last year, the FTC successfully blocked a grocery store merger between Kroger and Albertsons, two of the

02:22largest supermarket chains in our country and certainly in my home state of Washington. Blocking this merger

02:28preserved competition in grocery stores throughout the country. If we're serious about lowering prices, we should

02:34be giving the FTC more resources to fight corporate monopolies and even the playing field so that small businesses and

02:41start-ups can thrive and consumers can get better services at affordable prices.

02:45The immigration provisions in this bill just facilitate the illegal and unconstitutional actions

02:54that target immigrants of all immigration statuses, including U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents,

03:02foreign students, and even U.S. citizen children who are in the midst of cancer treatment and have been

03:10deported. And for all the talk from some Republicans on the other side, every time we have a discussion

03:16on immigration about how we love people who come here and do things legally, the so-called

03:21immigration fees that are in this bill are really fines and nothing but a cruel attempt to make

03:28immigrating to this country impossible. It's especially horrific in how it would treat unaccompanied

03:33children, effectively ending the U.S. protection system for kids by blocking them from accessing

03:39life-saving anti-trafficking protections that were established in the bipartisan Trafficking

03:45Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. So when we talk about how this bill is a Republican

03:51betrayal of the middle class, it's not just that. It's immoral. It's cruel. It's an all-out assault on

03:58everything that we hold dear. It's promises made and promises broken by an administration that cares more

04:04about the for-profit prison operators that bankroll Republican campaigns than the young U.S. citizen

04:11children who have been deported from their country of birth. It cares more about big pharma CEOs than

04:17families that rely on Medicaid. It cares more about insurance shareholders than seniors getting ripped

04:24off. Republicans are allowing stealing from everyday Americans just so they can lower taxes for the

04:31biggest corporations and wealthiest billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. This Republican betrayal

04:37is the largest redistribution of money from working-class Americans to the wealthy. And it's being done on the

04:44backs of our kids, our seniors, our families, our U.S. citizens, our legal permanent residents, people who have

04:51been here contributing to this country. It is unbridled greed, corruption, and cruelty. And I will be voting

04:59against it. I yield back.

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