00:00Thank you very much. Ranking Member Pallone, you're recognized.
00:05Thank you, Madam Chair. I, you know, I respect you a lot, but when I heard you in the beginning talk about Democrats' fear-mongering,
00:12I just want to assure you that when I went home on Friday and the short weekend that we had, I was not fear-mongering.
00:21And I was actually shocked because I live in my district, a lot of it is at the Jersey Shore, you know, it's almost July 4th.
00:29People were out at the beach in their bathing suits, happening at a good time.
00:33I thought, oh, I'm not going to hear much about this bill. But in reality, it was the opposite.
00:38I couldn't go anywhere without people talking to me about this bill.
00:42First day, Friday, I found out that the county commissioners in my home county, which is a Republican county, consistently votes Republican,
00:51had passed a resolution unanimously opposing the bill, all Republicans.
00:57Then I went to church, I guess, on Sunday. It was a church, I have to be honest with you, that is, most of the people there are Republicans.
01:05There aren't too many Democrats in the church. And literally some of the trustees came up to me and said,
01:11I'm so glad that you're voting against this bill. Please continue the fight against it.
01:16I went to a concert. This wasn't a rock concert. This was the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association.
01:23Maybe the name will give you an idea. Methodist Camp Meeting Association.
01:27And it was a classical concert. I couldn't even get out of the room without the hall, without people coming up to me and saying,
01:34you know, this is a terrible bill. I hope you can stop it.
01:37Then I also met with the governor over the weekend because on Monday our state adopted the state budget.
01:43It was about $57 billion state budget. And he and the health commissioner said to me that we're not going to be able to deal with this.
01:51We don't know what's going to happen. They estimate about $3.5 billion cut for the state of New Jersey out of a budget next year that, as I said, was just adopted money.
02:03$57 billion. What is that? About 6%. They don't think we can survive.
02:08So, you know, in all honesty, you know, you said, well, we're fear mongering.
02:14We're, you know, saying it's doomsday destroying the health care system. But that's what people are saying to us.
02:20That's not what we're saying to them. That's what they're saying to us because they realize that hospitals will close.
02:25They'll realize the shortfall in funding for nursing homes.
02:29They realize that the deficit spending not only is going to lead to sequestration of Medicare by 4% across the board,
02:39but that it's going to hurt the economy and the economy could actually go into recession because of the level of deficit.
02:45So I just want to assure you, this is what Democrats are hearing from our constituents.
02:49It's not what we're necessarily saying. It's what they're saying to us.
02:53Now, the other thing I want to stress is that, look, the reality is that every time this bill moves forward, more and more people lose their health insurance.
03:01I think when it was before our committee, the CBO figures, Mr. Chairman, were like 13.5 million people would lose their health insurance.
03:10Then when it passed the floor, it was like 14, 15. Now the CBO is saying that the Senate bill is almost 17 million people that will lose their health insurance.
03:19So it becomes crueler. I don't want to say ugly. I'm going to say cruel, more cruel as we proceed.
03:27I don't know whether we read the bill or not. This is whether you read the bill or not.
03:31The CBO is saying that we're talking now about almost 17 million Americans that are going to lose their health insurance.
03:40And what does that mean? It basically means that the hospitals, the nursing homes, community health centers are not going to be get the third party payment that comes from people who have health insurance.
03:52And so so much of this is now uncompensated care, which means people will go to the emergency room at the hospital.
03:59They can't afford to pay it. It becomes uncompensated care. And then the hospital, what do they do?
04:04They either raise prices, which means that insurance premiums and copays go up for people that have insurance.
04:10You know, we still know the majority of Americans get health insurance for their job.
04:14So those policies are going to be more expensive. The copays are going to be more expensive.
04:19And people all these people that don't have insurance are going to go to the emergency room and they don't get care.
04:24They don't see a doctor on a regular basis. They get sicker. And the consequences of the health care system really are devastating.
04:31Now, the other thing I wanted to say, too, is that one of the things that got significantly worse in the Senate bill is the provider, the provider tax.
04:39In other words, in the House bill, it was bad enough that the level of direct payments that states could made to failing hospitals and nursing homes was cut.
04:49But now it's made even worse in the Senate bill. The provider tax limitations in the House bill made it so that if you didn't if you whatever your provider tax revenue was, it couldn't grow.
05:01Right. Or it couldn't change. But what they did in the Senate is to basically cut back on it.
05:07So over the next few years, the amount of money that states can raise through provider tax actually decreases.
05:14It's not the status quo. It decreases. And that means because of what happens with that provider tax and going back to the hospitals and nursing homes,
05:24that they're going to have even less money to deal with and more likely to close, more likely to have cutbacks in services.
05:31So, look, in my opinion, this is an extreme bill. And it's not about waste, fraud and abuse.
05:37It's not about whether you work or not. Instead, the Republicans are taking away health care from some of the poorest Americans so they can give these big tax breaks to the billionaires,
05:48to the to the large corporations. And they're putting all kinds of paperwork, burdensome paperwork, time consuming roadblocks in the way people just people who are trying to get by, people who are working or people who can't work because they're disabled.
06:03And now all these barriers are being put in the way of they're being able to get Medicaid or the ACA.
06:11If you're not eligible for Medicaid because of these roadblocks, then you're also not eligible for the ACA because of these same roadblocks.
06:21Now, let me just talk a little bit beyond health care. We're mostly talking about health care and SNAP today.
06:26But our committee, as you know, deals with a lot of other things. So I think I need to also stress before I conclude that this bill is going to raise energy costs.
06:34It's going to prioritize corporate polluters over people.
06:37It's going to undermine our efforts to fight the climate crisis, which people care about as well.
06:42When we passed the Inflation Reduction Act three years ago, Congress took a massive step forward towards lowering energy bills for American families.
06:50However, that progress is reversed in this bill by rescinding a lot of those programs that were lowering energy costs and helping to build clean energy manufacturing here in the United States.
07:00It's a disaster for the environment. I know I'm using these tough words, Madam Chair, but I have to.
07:06It's a disaster for the environment because it guts critical environmental protections or programs that were in the IRA.
07:12It rescinds the unobligated funds for virtually every environmental protection agency program that was put into the Inflation Reduction Act.
07:21It repeals the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
07:23It also undermines the landmark methane reduction bill and the fee that holds polluters accountable.
07:29And it just gives another leg up to the fossil fuel industry while eliminating clean energy initiatives.
07:35I believe in all of the above. I believe we need fossil fuels, we need nuclear, we need clean energy.
07:41What you're doing in this bill is eliminating the clean energy portion and saying that the rest is okay.
07:46But that's not the way it works. We need to move forward with clean energy as well.
07:50And then the last thing, I think, because my chairman mentioned it, about Spectrum.
07:55He was very proud of, I think, what you said about the Spectrum.
08:00But the bottom line is you're taking $80 million from a Spectrum auction, which traditionally we have used to help, you know, expand options for the public.
08:12Like, we funded grants with Spectrum for next generation 9-11, or to make high-speed internet more affordable for American families.
08:20That's what Spectrum auction should be paid, should be used for. It shouldn't be used to give tax cuts for billionaires and large corporations.
08:27So, I know I've heard you guys say this is the big, beautiful bill. I've heard our guys say this is the big, ugly bill.
08:34I think it's the big, cruel bill, because American families are really going to suffer.
08:38And they shouldn't have to suffer in the ways that I described today.
08:42We should be trying to help them with affordability, with making their lives better.
08:47This bill is going to be the opposite. It's really the big, cruel bill, in my opinion, Madam Chair, and I yield back.
