At a Senate Democratic leadership press briefing on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was asked if there was a Democratic alternative to Republicans' Big Beautiful Bill.
00:00What is the democratic alternative to this bill? Isn't it correct that without some mediation, we're going to see an increase in both personal and business taxes, regardless of what is bad in the bill. Taxes are going to go up.
00:15Okay, look, the bottom line is you will see in the amendments and reconciliation not only what we oppose in the Republican bill, but some of the things we stand for, and the public will see it. We just welcome the contrast that this reconciliation bill brings between what the Democrats stand for and what the Republicans stand for.
00:37Leader Schumer, you tried to get something new last fall on AI. There's a major AI provision in this bill, the 10-year moratorium. Is that a good idea, to delay that for such a long period of time?
00:48Well, what happened in the moratorium is they withdrew the entire national moratorium. They put some strings attached to it. There's a great dispute as to what those strings mean.
01:00Senator Cantwell feels they mean one thing, and Senator Thune thinks they mean another.
01:04If there are amendments to make this bill better on Medicaid, reduce the size of the cuts, would Democrats support it to make the bill less bad?
01:16Look, there's so much bad in the bill. It's as bad as the Medicaid is. There are so many other things we oppose. Tax cuts for billionaires, as you've heard from us many times.
01:25So I don't think that would happen.
01:27We always, of course we will support, we're going to see, we'll have amendments to change the Medicare provisions, and we'll see how Republicans, who have always said they don't like this vote, let me just say one other thing.
01:40Rural hospitals get clobbered. This little fund to help reimburse rural hospitals is just a fraud.
01:49There won't be even close to enough money to probably reimburse rural hospitals in any of the larger states. Thank you.
