00:00Madam President, first, I want to thank my colleagues and especially just now my colleague from Georgia for their work tonight, for their expression of what's at stake in this moment.
00:14And to Senator Warnock, I say thank you and amen.
00:20I'm here today because I'm joining the majority of Americans who are deeply alarmed by this plan from the president and his congressional allies.
00:30A plan that will make life less affordable for more Americans.
00:36When we return home for this 4th of July, it would be nice to be able to tell our constituents that we came together and passed bipartisan legislation to help bring down costs for families.
00:48Instead, my colleagues who vote for this legislation will have to explain why, at a time when families' pocketbooks are strained, they chose to support a partisan bill to make American life even less affordable.
01:05What will America look like once this bill takes effect?
01:12Millions of people will have lost their health coverage, thanks to the largest cut to Medicaid in American history.
01:20More people won't be able to afford preventive care and cancer screenings.
01:25And more people will get sick.
01:27Health care premiums will surge for everyone because fewer people will have care and the number of uninsured Americans will increase.
01:37Rural hospitals will close their doors because they lost Medicaid reimbursements that helped keep them afloat.
01:43More people, especially in states like mine, will have to make long car rides just to get to a hospital 50 miles away in those desperate moments when minutes feel like hours and hours like eternities.
02:01Seniors will be thrown into grave peril because this bill threatens hundreds of billions in Medicare cuts.
02:07And once this plan eviscerates food assistance programs, it will be much harder for families to afford to put food on the table at a time when groceries are already far too expensive.
02:20Let there be no mistake, more families and children who today are being fed will go hungry.
02:29And all the while, our children will be burdened with trillions more in debt.
02:35In the name of what cause is all this done?
02:39Well, it's all to pay for tax breaks for billionaires.
02:43This bill will also make us an America where our people are less free.
02:49In New Hampshire, during my time as governor, we adopted Medicaid expansion with support from both political parties.
02:55And we balanced the budget at the same time.
02:58We understood that with health comes freedom.
03:01The freedom to work and provide for one's family.
03:04The freedom from disease and despair.
03:07The freedom that comes from, why do I even have to say this, being alive?
03:14Granite staters also understood that a great country like ours treats its people with great dignity.
03:22In America, we don't sacrifice the health of our neighbors.
03:25We don't let families fall sick.
03:28And we do not imperil our economy, our debt, and our workforce just to pay for a tax giveaway for a billionaire.
03:36So what kind of country will we be with this bill?
03:41We will not only be less healthy, but we will be less prosperous and less free.
03:47In short, this bill is at odds with what we aspire to be as Americans.
03:57It's also worth noting how remarkably out of step this bill is with the American people's plea to bring down costs.
04:05In a democracy like ours, theoretically, the people's representatives passed legislation that reflects the aspirations of the majority.
04:14I say theoretically because clearly that is not what is happening today.
04:19Indeed, according to the data from the Joint Economic Committee Minority, if one combines this bill with the president's tariffs,
04:27firefighters, truck drivers, and teachers, for instance, will lose $470 or more next year,
04:34while the top 0.1 percent, that's people who earn about $4 million or more, will be $348,000 richer.
04:43This bill would take away health care from tens of thousands of granite staters and would take a similar toll across the country.
04:54Indeed, in both Florida and Texas, the number of people who will lose their health insurance is greater than the entire population of New Hampshire.
05:04Millions of people losing care with a stroke of a pen.
05:10What have these people done to deserve that?
05:13All the American people are asking for is for us to help bring down costs.
05:19So the president and the Republicans in Congress take away their health care?
05:25Sometimes in Washington, we're faced with bills that fail to fully meet the moment, to be sure.
05:30But it is rare to find legislation like this, a bill that makes life less affordable during a time when Americans of every political stripe are crying out for lower costs.
05:42A bill that seems as if it was drafted just to make a mockery of the wills and wishes of the majority of people in this country.
05:52Lately, many of my colleagues and some political pundits have been talking about this bill as if it were inevitable.
06:00A runaway freight train is so vast that it cannot be stopped.
06:04And in light of this inevitability, they suggest that some of the bill's deficiencies can just be overlooked.
06:12But of course, this bill was not inevitable, nor is it now.
06:18So let's be clear, each and every senator in this body has free will.
06:27God-given free will.
06:30Which means that the measures in this legislation that got Medicaid weren't written by mistake or by chance.
06:38We didn't arrive at this day with a vote on this terrible budget bill by accident.
06:44Let's not delude ourselves.
06:45We're only here because a majority in this body decided to ignore the majority of the country and made a series of decisions.
06:55The Republican majority decided to gut Medicaid.
07:00They decided to take away health care from millions.
07:05They decided to raise insurance premiums for the rest of us.
07:10They decided that closed hospitals were a risk worth taking.
07:16They decided that taking food away from hungry kids was acceptable.
07:21They decided that trillions more in debt was not a problem.
07:25The Republican majority decided that depriving the American people of all these things and raising their costs were worth it just as long as they paid for another tax break for billionaires.
07:42Because that's the bargain that this administration, along with my Republican colleagues, is forcing the American people to accept.
07:52Our people will be less healthy.
07:55Our kids will have more debt.
07:57But the president and billionaires like him will get a tax break.
08:05Of course, part of what makes this bill so frustrating is it includes some individual provisions that I've spent years trying to pass into law.
08:13This bill includes provisions I support, some even that I authored, like strengthening the R&D tax deduction to support our entrepreneurs and a tax cut for families to make child care more affordable.
08:24I also support this bill's provisions, which would tackle our housing crisis by expanding the low-income housing tax credit to bring down the cost of housing,
08:33as well as a provision making mortgage insurance tax deductible so that it's easier to buy a home.
08:39And I'd support a bill with real tax cuts for the middle class and small businesses, unlike the token measures included in this bill.
08:47If my Republican colleagues worked across the aisle to draft a bill that brought this bipartisan approach to other critical areas, like health care and food assistance, I'd vote for it.
09:00Instead, my colleagues chose to take these common-sense solutions hostage by linking every good idea to three bad ones, turning this into a purely partisan endeavor.
09:12So, yes, I'm glad that some of these bipartisan provisions will be signed into law, but I regret that they aren't a part of a truly bipartisan effort
09:21because of the politics of division and destruction that President Trump brings to Washington.
09:29Now, I know that there are many areas of common ground with my Republican colleagues in this body, but it has become far too difficult to move forward on finding solutions
09:41when, at every turn, the President seems far more interested in demonizing and dividing rather than bringing people together,
09:50turning areas of agreement into weapons to force disagreement.
09:54Now, that's exactly the kind of cynical politics of division that does lasting damage to our families, our economy, and our democracy.
10:06Now, President Trump likely will get this bill passed.
10:11He may get enough of the Republican caucus to stand in line once again to pass it,
10:16even though my Republican colleagues know that budget analysts have added up the financial cost of this bill
10:24and have told them that it adds trillions upon trillions to our national debt, burdening our children's future.
10:34But, you know, as important as the debt is, it's not the only cost of passing this awful bill.
10:42There's another kind of cost, a cost not simply of dollars and cents.
10:47I shouldn't have to remind this administration and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle about the nature of this cost.
10:53They know it.
10:55But just to be clear, this tax break for corporate special interests and billionaires has a price,
11:02a price that can't be summed up in a budget line or written off during tax season.
11:06Because when we debate health care in America, some dress up these discussions with words like reconciliation and program and discretionary spending.
11:17But what they're talking about is being sick and being healthy.
11:22What they're talking about, whether they want to admit it or not, is living and dying.
11:28So how much does this bill cost?
11:34The cost is millions of Americans losing their health care.
11:38The cost is countless families feeling the pain of higher insurance premiums.
11:43The cost is a mother being forced to choose between paying out of pocket for her own care or paying for groceries for her kids.
11:52It's a price that's exacted in cancers that go undetected.
11:56It's exacted in chronic illnesses that go untreated.
11:59It's exacted in the health care challenges in our country that continue to go unaddressed.
12:04Because we spend all our energies simply trying to keep our heads above water in floods of the president's own making.
12:15The price tag is more than dollars and cents.
12:19It includes the cost of losing more people from our workforce because they're too ill to work.
12:24It includes the gnawing pains of hunger and the slow toll of malnutrition that will come as food assistance programs are robbed.
12:35It includes the anguish of young parents no longer knowing how they will make ends meet.
12:43It includes the lost hopes and deferred dreams of people held back by illness.
12:48It includes the cost of having to say more early goodbyes.
12:53What is the price tag of this bill?
12:57The price, in the end, is the health and freedom of millions of Americans.
13:03A price that will be paid because somewhere on the road that brought us here, here in President Trump's Washington,
13:10some people decided that the health of some child or her mother may be dear,
13:17but it doesn't carry the same weight as a bigger tax return for a billionaire does.
