00:02President, before she leaves the floor, I want to thank my colleague, in particular,
00:07for putting a human face on what this is all about for us on this side of the aisle,
00:12that small child, the senior you were talking about.
00:15I'm going to pick up on what you said, and I thank you for your leadership.
00:21Mr. President, I'm going to get into the specifics of this horrifying bill in a moment,
00:27all the details of the health care carnage and the clean energy bloodbath
00:32that Republicans are dragging America toward.
00:36First, though, I want to spend just a few minutes on the state of the Senate and our democracy.
00:44As of a few hours ago, the rules of the Senate are whatever Republicans feel like when the day begins.
00:53It's democracy-defying, plain and simple.
00:59The bill before the Senate is loaded, loaded, with fraudulent budget math
01:05that hides trillions of dollars in handouts to corporations and the ultra-wealthy.
01:10It's a violation of the rules that used to be followed for years for the reconciliation process.
01:19It's a violation of the Congressional Budget Act.
01:24It's a violation of common sense.
01:28Republicans decided that none of that matters.
01:31So they've kind of gone nuclear to advance the bill.
01:34Apparently, in this chamber, if the Republican chair of the Budget Committee says so,
01:39one plus one equals three.
01:41That is unsustainable.
01:44We are going to be a sicker, poorer, and weaker country if this bill becomes law
01:51and the Republicans have used this process, going nuclear, to pass it.
01:56But these moves cut both ways, and there will be a lot of cleanup for Democrats to handle down the road.
02:03Now, in my time in public service, Mr. President, I have never seen a more destructive, regressive, common-sense-defying bill debated in the Senate.
02:16This bill is going to determine the future of health care in America.
02:20Millions of Americans will lose their health insurance if Republicans pass the bill.
02:25My colleagues seem to be ignoring, for example, the fact that rural hospitals are the anchor of life in much of America.
02:36This bill will sever that anchor and set rural health care adrift.
02:41Here's how flawed the Republican plan is.
02:45The danger they're causing for rural hospitals is so great, Republicans have had to create a rural hospital relief fund.
02:56It is a Band-Aid on an amputation.
03:00I can tell you one thing I know for sure is only in Washington, D.C. would you create a relief fund to address a problem that you caused.
03:12How about you just not cut $1 trillion from Medicaid in the first place?
03:17Now, I wanted to get a sense of what rural America thought of this legislation.
03:23So last weekend, I held four town halls in three eastern Oregon counties.
03:30It's as rural as it gets.
03:32Donald Trump carried these counties overwhelmingly.
03:36One of them was Malheur County, where Donald Trump received more than 70 percent of the vote.
03:42This is where I held an Open to All town hall meeting.
03:45It happens to have one of the highest Medicaid enrollments in the country.
03:50The message I heard was very clear and very loud.
03:55This bill will be a disaster for Malheur County on rural health.
04:00Now, health care is a top employer in America.
04:03If these cuts go through, the health care workforce in rural areas of our nation is going to be decimated.
04:10Nurses, doctors, and support staff will lose their jobs, and rural economies are going to suffer.
04:15Many of the Americans that will feel the consequences of this legislation today walk an economic tightrope.
04:23Many of multiple jobs.
04:25Millions more Americans will lose their benefits like home care and mental health,
04:30and services that already fall far short of what our people expect.
04:35These are overwhelmingly kids, people with disabilities, seniors.
04:42All to pay for more tax cuts for multinational corporations and the ultra-wealthy.
04:50It's not just the cuts.
04:52It's also a whole lot more red tape, making it harder for people to get care.
04:59At the center of the Republican Medicaid changes is a bunch of red tape thickets designed to entrap people
05:09into a never-ending maze of AI chatbots and phone trees that make it impossible for them to get the coverage they need.
05:18And even if you manage to get through all that bureaucratic water torture and sign up for Medicaid,
05:23the Republican plan says if you lose your job, you lose your health care.
05:28Why would the Congress want to inflict that on more people?
05:33Nobody I could find once these cuts, no matter their political persuasion,
05:38and I was in places that were bright red.
05:41I'm sure most of us can agree there's a real debate to be had on how we can make health care more affordable and accessible,
05:47but this bill achieves none of that.
05:52Let me mention seniors.
05:54My colleagues have touched on the elderly.
05:57Two in three nursing home beds in America are covered by Medicaid.
06:01If Republicans pass this into law, conditions will deteriorate.
06:05Seniors will be forced out of their nursing homes or forced to move in with family
06:10that doesn't have the necessary skills to care for their aging parents or grandparents.
06:17Nursing homes would be forced to shut their doors as a result of these cuts
06:21during a time when states are in desperate need of more nursing home options, not fewer.
06:27The bill also repeals nursing home safety standards.
06:31That's going to mean fewer nurses in nursing homes.
06:34You would think that would be a concern of Republicans in the Trump administration.
06:39But when the Finance Committee was considering the nomination of CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, he said, and I quote,
06:46I believe we can provide quality of care equivalent to having a nurse in that nursing home using tools and technologies.
06:53Dr. Oz was apparently talking about AI.
06:57And I said, you're for cutting nurses.
06:59What's going to happen when an 85-year-old woman has to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and needs some help?
07:06He had no answers, but he's still being a big booster on artificial intelligence.
07:12I'm deeply troubled about what the Trump administration has in store for America's seniors.
07:19That's on top of the fact that home-based care that most seniors prefer will be one of the first benefits states are forced to cut
07:27because it's optional now rather than mandatory.
07:31Hundreds of thousands of seniors, Mr. President, are going to see a premium increase of about $200 a month.
07:41The bill also applies the worst forms of corporate red tape to the Affordable Care Act.
07:47Shorter enrollment periods, more verification forms, more hoops, more bureaucracy, more red tape for Americans who just want affordable health care.
07:57And the health care carnage may get worse with the Republican amendments coming up.
08:02It's my understanding that they're going to offer an amendment that would lower the federal Medicaid match
08:07for new enrollees in what's known as the Medicaid expansion.
08:11That was a key part of the Affordable Care Act that delivered affordable health care to roughly 21 million Americans last year.
08:19If this amendment is adopted, taking together with the other awful policies in the bill,
08:25it would amount to repealing the Affordable Care Act and making good on the 15-year Republican crusade to dismantle that law.
08:37Millions more working Americans, Mr. President, are going to lose their health insurance,
08:41and it would break a promise to the 41 states that have expanded Medicaid, many of them red states.
08:47These health care cuts aren't just going to be felt by Americans with Medicaid.
08:52And those who buy health insurance on their own are going to be similarly hit.
08:57Emergency room wait times are going to skyrocket, and premiums will spike.
09:02Families will be one lost job or financial calamity away from being tossed onto a safety net that has rips and tears everywhere you look.
09:12So many are going to fall between the cracks.
09:17I also wanted to touch on another horrendous provision on health care buried in the bill,
09:23the defunding of the Planned Parenthood program,
09:27and they're doing it in a way that's essentially a backdoor, nationwide abortion ban.
09:34This provision is going to strip clinics of their funding and make it impossible for them to provide life-saving health care,
09:40cancer screenings, annual exams, all of that will disappear for the people that rely on these clinics for basic care.
09:48The health care cuts are getting a big focus, Mr. President, with myself, my colleagues,
09:54because of the challenge for so many communities.
10:01That's the clean energy bloodbath, and it certainly deserves attention.
10:06In the middle of the night, Friday into Saturday, the bill that was already a disaster for clean energy got much, much, much worse.
10:15What Republicans have on offer doesn't just repeal the tax credits that I wrote for wind and solar energy in the Finance Committee.
10:23Now we've got an actual massacre on our hands.
10:26This Republican plan actually taxes wind and solar, a new tax on the cheapest and easiest way to get new energy to the grid.
10:37At the same time, somebody tucked into the bill a brand new tax break for coal.
10:43So here we are, 2025, and the Senate is about to pass a bill that taxes wind and solar while subsidizing coal.
10:53It is so backward, it leaves you slack-jawed.
10:58When you look at this bill, it's awfully clear that the Republican goal is to destroy key sources of clean energy in America.
11:08It's a death sentence for the wind and solar industries in our country.
11:12A total abandonment of hundreds of thousands of workers who are about to lose their jobs is a direct result of the bill.
11:18The head of the North American Building Trades Union, that represents millions of construction workers, issued a stunning statement on the bill yesterday.
11:27I'll read a few select lines from the statement.
11:31He said, it's the biggest job-killing bill in the history of the country, is how he described the Republican plan.
11:40Staggering and unfathomable job loss.
11:42A threat to an estimated 1.75 million construction workers.
11:46And this union leader said it was the equivalent of terminating 1,000 Keystone XL pipelines.
11:55And it was another lifeline and competitive advantage to China in the race for global energy dominance.
12:01He also said critical infrastructure projects will be sacrificed at the altar of ideology.
12:11Mr. President, those were all direct quotes.
12:14Hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy investments under the Republican plan will simply disappear.
12:21Not government subsidies or handouts.
12:23These are private sector investments we will not have.
12:27And even worse, this is a guaranteed way to hike utility bills for families and businesses of all sizes in every nook and cranny of America.
12:38I have never seen this kind of economic self-sabotage.
12:44The demand for energy booms right now.
12:47Even the heads of companies involved in fossil fuels are saying to me and other members of Congress,
12:53we need solar quickly to get more electrons to the grid.
12:58But Republicans don't want to listen.
13:01Because this plan risks plunging us into an energy crisis.
13:06It would be a disaster and a total surrender to China on clean energy manufacturing.
13:13It's clear as a sunny day that all the talk from Donald Trump and Republicans about American energy dominance was just a fraud.
13:23Nothing but a hollow campaign slogan.
13:25And I'll close with this.
13:27There is no question in my mind, Mr. President, the American people went to the polls in 2024 to vote for cheaper groceries, cheaper utilities and cheaper gas.
13:39They didn't vote to kick 16 million people off their health care so Republicans can give more tax breaks to billionaires and corporations.
13:47They didn't vote for an energy crisis that benefits nobody except big oil investors.
13:54There is a real cost of living crisis facing American families right now.
13:59And this Senate ought to be focused on finding ways to lower drug prices, for example, expand access to quality and affordable health care, and bring down the cost of living.
14:10Instead, Republicans are using every ounce of their power to jam through another round of tax breaks for those at the very top, and they're doing it on the backs of everybody else.
14:22There are serious challenges ahead, Mr. President, and there's going to be a serious mess to clean up.
14:29But until then, countless Americans will needlessly suffer and die as a direct result of losing their health care under this legislation.
14:39I don't believe the American people are going to forget.
14:42On this side of the aisle, we'll make certain that this topic is something that is dealt with again and again until the American people finally get a fair shake.
