'This Is Actually The Worst Bill That I Have Ever Seen': Jason Crow Tears Into House GOP's Budget

Forbes Breaking News

During a town hall in Centennial, Colorado on Tuesday, Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) was asked about the Republicans' budget that passed the House last week.

Transcript

00:00I have tons of questions, but I'll limit it to one.

00:05And my biggest fear is, how are you going to stop his big, beautiful, ugly bill?

00:18Well, it is a terrible bill.

00:22This is actually, I was looking back over my six years of Congress,

00:26which feels like a lot longer than that, actually.

00:30And I was thinking about all the things I voted on, some of which I'm extremely proud of,

00:35things like the Safer Community Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, great things.

00:40And then I was thinking about the other things that I voted against.

00:43And I can say that this bill is actually the worst bill that I have ever seen,

00:49an omnibus global bill, in my entire time in Congress.

00:54And let me tell you why, just by the numbers.

00:57And then I'm going to tell you about my perspective on stopping it.

01:00It's going to add $3.2 trillion to the deficit.

01:05It's not paid for.

01:07It's going to have over $1 trillion in cuts of Medicaid, right?

01:11So you're not just cutting Medicaid for 13 million Americans,

01:15including 175,000 people in my district that I represent.

01:19But you're taking a trillion dollars out of the healthcare system.

01:22Just think about what's going to happen.

01:24The hospitals, the clinics, the medical providers, whether you're on Medicaid or not,

01:28think about what that's going to do to the entire healthcare system in America,

01:32taking $1.1 trillion out of that system.

01:35It's going to cut $300 billion in snap cuts, right?

01:39So this is hungry children in our community, kids that go to school here,

01:44at this school and other schools.

01:47And get this, to give tax cuts largely for the top 1%.

01:54So it's going to give, it's going to give, for 1.2 million Americans,

02:01it's going to give more than, more tax cuts to the top 1.2 million than to the bottom 127 million.

02:10Right?

02:11And if you're in the bottom 20%, you're going to see an average of a $90 tax cut

02:17before offsets for Medicaid and snap losses, which are going to put people deep, deep in a hole.

02:23So this is an awful bill.

02:25And it's going to have terrible consequences.

02:27All Democrats in the House united against this bill and voted against it.

02:38And that's actually happened several times this cycle.

02:41We have united against the bill, which is fairly uncommon, actually.

02:45So this is, this is a point of pride for us.

02:48I'm going to continue to fight.

02:50I'm going to continue to communicate because one of our biggest responsibilities right now

02:54is to communicate to as many people as possible, including people in areas

03:00that are represented by folks who are not doing town halls.

03:04People who are hiding from their constituents because they've supported this.

03:08And we have an obligation to reach out to those folks and to put pressure on those folks

03:13who are trying to hide from their responsibility.

03:15So that's my primary responsibility.

03:17And if it, and if it comes back, if it comes back to the House, of course,

03:23I will resist it again.

03:25So now over to the Senate.

03:27So the functional Senate, Jason.

03:30Where did you go?

03:32Where is the person?

03:33Sorry.

03:34Thanks for the question.

03:35It's on the minds of lots and lots of people.

03:37First of all, let me, I'm not going to repeat anything Jason said.

03:41I'll agree with everything that he said.

03:42Where are, you know, where are we living as a country on, on these economic questions?

03:47That's really important to understand because Trump is the cause of many, many problems.

03:52I blame him for many, many things.

03:54But I think fundamentally he's also a symptom of a very important problem in America, which

04:00is the lack of economic mobility that we have in this country, the profound income inequality

04:06we have in this country.

04:07I could give you a bunch of statistics, but let me just give you this one.

04:13You know, today as we're here, the bottom, the top 1% of Americans own 50% of the value

04:22of the stock market.

04:23The bottom 50% of Americans own 1% of the value of the stock market.

04:27That's not how it looked 20 years ago.

04:29You know, for the American people, there's a real feeling that no matter how hard they

04:34work, their kids aren't going to do better than they are.

04:37And there's a lot of evidence that that's the case.

04:4050% of 30-year-olds today are going to make less income than their parents.

04:45And if you're a young man in your 20s in America today, you're making less on average

04:50than you did in the 1970s.

04:52What is Donald Trump's answer to that?

04:54To give big tax rates to the richest people and to cut the most significant safety net we

04:59have in America.

05:00I was in Grand Junction recently with a Republican congressman that serves in Colorado.

05:08And we were with all of the health care providers from all over the western slope of Colorado.

05:14These are red, red areas of Colorado where Medicaid is a, it truly is, you know, keeping the lights

05:22on in the hospitals there, truly keeping the lights on in the clinics there.

05:26And the people there were saying we already don't have OB services, for example.

05:31We already have to send people to Denver because we've had to close, you know, not emergency rooms,

05:37but primary care or mental care.

05:39I mean, there's mental health care.

05:40There's all kinds of stuff.

05:41That's before Trump does the cuts to Medicaid.

05:44So we're going to do everything we can to fight this in the Senate.

05:48And there are disagreements among the Republicans right now about what they want to do.

05:53I think ultimately Donald Trump could care less about whether or not he preserves Medicaid.

05:59I think he's going to actually try to cut Medicaid.

06:02And I think it is very likely that he will be able to ram it through.

06:06Jason said he wanted to be honest.

06:07I want to be honest.

06:08There are 53 votes probably.

06:10But we have to fight and try and see if we can shame them into not doing it.

06:14There are a whole bunch of really important climate provisions that are being reversed,

06:20that are really important to Colorado, that are really important to rural Colorado,

06:25our wind and solar industries that matter to Republican senators,

06:29or at least used to before Donald Trump made them all walk out on the very first day they were there

06:35and vote for Pete Hegseth to be the Secretary of Defense.

06:38I mean, he did that for a reason.

06:41And the reason was to show everybody in America who's the boss, who's in charge,

06:46what he can actually get them to do.

06:48But I think that the debate that we're going to have is really important in and of itself

06:52because it will demonstrate to the American people that Trump is actually making matters worse,

06:58you know, now that he's there.

07:01Not a big surprise, but that is what he's doing.

07:04And then the last point I want to make is this.

07:09We're in a fight to save Medicaid when what we need to be in is a fight to have universal health care in this country.

07:20And universal mental health care in this country.

07:24And we can't lose sight of that.

07:27Thank you very much.

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