00:00This is Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She represents Florida's 25th District.
00:05Congresswoman, thank you so much for joining us.
00:08Thanks for having me, Maggie. Good to be with you.
00:10You have a busy day. And in fact, earlier today, you spoke on the floor of Congress and called this bill, quote,
00:16a vile Republican plunder of working families, seniors and veterans.
00:22Four recent polls would show that Americans agree with you.
00:25On average, 55 percent of Americans who've been asked about this bill oppose it.
00:30While 31 percent support it.
00:32Broadly speaking, can you give us an overview of exactly how those working families you referenced will be affected by this agenda?
00:40Sure. In several different, really concerning ways.
00:44First, the bill from coming back from the Senate kicks 17 million people off of their health care.
00:52And that is a combination of people on Medicaid as well as people who would no longer qualify for subsidies to reduce the cost of their premiums in the Affordable Care Act.
01:04That's because Republicans made these massive restrictions that will end up causing people to lose their health care.
01:12In addition to that, it makes massive cuts, four billion dollars in cuts to SNAP benefits, nutrition assistance cuts that essentially tell our veterans who use SNAP benefits,
01:27our children, our disabled, our elderly, you are going to have to go hungry and figure out how to put food on your table because we're not going to provide nutrition assistance for you anymore.
01:37It also is going to force many rural hospitals to close because of those Medicaid cuts, as well as nursing homes,
01:46because the overwhelming majority of nursing homes in this country have a high percentage of their patients who are in their nursing homes paid for by their Medicaid coverage.
01:57There are many more things, but the other massive problem is that at the same time, it has these horrendous cuts.
02:05It also blows a $4 trillion hole in the deficit and a $5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling.
02:13That's so that Republicans can make enough room in the debt ceiling to transfer and give the most massive increase in tax cuts targeted at millionaires and billionaires and the well-off.
02:28And that is all, this entire bill, that is the ultimate goal of this entire piece of legislation.
02:35So it's extremely troubling.
02:38The deficit portion is especially, especially troubling because it triggers a $500 billion cut in Medicare because the increase in the debt in the deficit is so significant.
02:53Is there any part of this bill that you agree with or that you think would provide value to the American people?
02:59This is the most troubling, abominable bill that I have ever had in front of me as a legislator in my entire career.
03:12I have not really, I can't really recall a time when I had legislation in front of me that had no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
03:21It doesn't have to be that way.
03:22We could certainly make reforms and we could certainly work together.
03:27But this is a, but this is a MAGA extremist Trump bill that was rammed through originally in the House in the dark of night.
03:35We voted on it at 3 in the morning.
03:37We had no time to review it.
03:39And essentially that's what they're doing with the bill that came back from the Senate.
03:44Only the bill that comes back from the Senate is even worse than what was passed out of the House.
03:48Even worse, yet you reference reforms.
03:50And this might be a more procedural question, but just how much of the bill could change as Congress debates it?
03:57Are there any parts that could be dialed back and made more perhaps reasonable in your view?
04:04Well, certainly, if the Republicans decided to work with Democrats and reached across the rotunda and worked in the Senate and went back, rather than ramming what the Senate passed last night through the House or attempting to ram it through it, we could go to a conference committee.
04:22And a conference committee would require input and feedback from Democrats.
04:25Republicans are still in the majority.
04:27They would control much of that process.
04:28But there would have to be a negotiation.
04:31And in negotiation, we've been able many times over the years I've been in Congress to reach a bipartisan budget deal that ensures that things like making sure the tax cuts are targeted to the middle class and working families, as well as people who are already successful, and make sure that we have more balanced changes to health care programs.
04:54We certainly don't want people to get Medicaid that aren't eligible for it.
04:58But if the Republicans are making up that there are these millions of people, according to them, that are on Medicaid who are undocumented, that's already against the law.
05:06And there are not people who are undocumented that are getting Medicaid.
05:11So unfortunately, the lying that is taking place on the Republican side about what this bill really does is, I think, making things worse for them rather than making it easier.
05:24I started this conversation citing a few different pieces of polling that show how broadly unpopular the quote unquote big, beautiful bill is.
05:33What are you hearing from your Republican colleagues?
05:36Do they see voting for it as a threat to their reelection chances?
05:39And as such, are they considering voting no?
05:42Well, they should.
05:43Well, they should.
05:44I mean, I think that just like in 2018, when they tried unsuccessfully to take the Affordable Care Act away and repeal it and yank health care away from even even more people, voters rejected it and rejected them.
06:00And Democrats won the majority of the House of Representatives.
06:02I'm a breast cancer survivor, and I know from just growing up with parents who always said to me, Debbie, if you don't have your health, you don't have anything.
06:14And I learned that firsthand when I found a lump in the shower doing a routine self-exam.
06:18And when I was 41 years old, I became a breast cancer patient.
06:21And when you're staring down the barrel of your life, and on top of that, Republicans now are going to tell people who might be diagnosed with cancer that, you know, no, we're taking away your health care coverage.
06:33So you're going to have to just figure it out for yourself.
06:37That means that you're going to have a lot of people die.
06:39I mean, this legislation will kill people, because you can die as a result of not being able to afford to go to the doctor and get a problem taken care of, like cancer, which went caught early in many cases because of the incredible research progress we've made, can actually be resolved for someone, and they can survive their cancer diagnosis.
07:01But Republicans don't care.
07:02They don't care about the increased costs.
07:04They promised that they were going to focus on affordability, and instead what they're doing is focusing on their wealthy supporters and their increasing costs in this legislation massively for people who can least afford it.
07:19And that's really unpopular because, you know, for the most part in America, our folks care about one another.
07:26They don't want to see health care yanked away from people that they know need it.
07:30They don't want to see children go hungry and not be able to get, you know, assistance for their school lunch program or for families not to be able to have assistance for their groceries and kids have to skip meals or parents have to go hungry so that their kids eat.
07:46In what moral universe is it okay to take away people's health care, cut their nutrition assistance so people go hungry, all so that you can give more tax breaks to the wealthiest, most fortunate Americans?
07:57I think that you're seeing polling, Maggie, because you have a lot of moral people who are telling the immoral colleagues who've presented this bill that they need to stand out.
08:12Those are important stories because the Congressional Budget Office estimates that this bill, if passed, would reduce federal spending on Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion.
08:23And that is such a large number that it's hard to conceptualize.
08:25So what you're describing, Congresswoman, is a real-world cost in which people lose their lives because of this bill.
08:32They do, because if you can't afford – when you have Medicaid, that is health care insurance coverage.
08:38It is subsidized health insurance coverage by the state for people who fall into a certain income bracket.
08:45And that means that if you have Medicaid coverage, when your child has the sniffles, like when they're on the CHIP program, the Children's Health Insurance Program, or when they have fever, or when you, like I did, find a lump and you're on Medicaid, then you can go to a doctor.
09:01And you can get that lump checked out, and you can have a mammogram and preventative care, and maybe catch that illness early.
09:09When your Medicaid coverage gets yanked from you because of this bill, because you can't make a trillion dollars in cuts to this program and say that it's only people who, you know, fall into the waste, fraud, and abuse category.
09:24I mean, there's just not a trillion dollars of individuals who are on Medicaid due to waste, fraud, and abuse that's just outrageous and unrealistic and false.
09:36And so what you're doing is you're taking away that lifeline, that safety net, the ability for people to be able to make sure that they can take care of health care challenges at their start and survive them, and then just get basic access to well care.
09:51You know, go in and get a checkup. Make sure that you actually stave off illness. Make sure that we don't cut people's nutrition assistance and that they can put food on their table.
10:02You know, the people I serve with in Congress who are planning to vote for this bill, they don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from.
10:10They don't have to worry about, you know, what they're putting in their grocery basket when they're food shopping.
10:15And it's just callous and indifferent for them to not be thinking about the consequences of their vote.
