00:00Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be vitiated.
00:04Without objection.
00:05Thank you, Mr. President.
00:06Mr. President, thank you.
00:07I appreciate the opportunity to speak today.
00:10Some may know, some may not, that today is Medicaid's birthday.
00:15And I thought it was probably a good time to our anniversary, whatever you want to call it.
00:20But I came down here to reconnect to a discussion that I was having with my colleagues and with the White House on some of the concerns I have with the provisions and the bill that we packaged that was called the Big Beautiful Bill.
00:38That's actually not a marketing term.
00:40That's literally what the name of the bill is.
00:42First, I have to stipulate that there are aspects of this bill that I would love to vote on ten times.
00:52For example, the tax reform.
00:54The tax, the tax portions of this bill were something I worked very hard as a member of the Finance Committee to get passed back in 2017.
01:05And what we did there was to avoid the single largest tax increase in U.S. history.
01:09And for those who said it was tax breaks to billionaires and corporations, probably ought to read the language or have somebody who has to explain it better.
01:20The tax reform measures help people that grew up like I did first and foremost.
01:27Go to that trailer park that I lived in on Richards Road in Antioch, Tennessee, just south of downtown Nashville, or the one that I lived in Jacksonville, Florida.
01:35And ask them what happens when you overtax businesses to their jobs.
01:41I could get into a lot of other discussions, but the bottom line is I didn't have a problem with the tax provisions.
01:48I actually wish that the tax, that that had been the content of the first bill and that we took the time to get the Medicaid policy right.
01:58But I'm back here again to talk about the Medicaid policy because we have to get it right.
02:03One of the reasons why I decided to resign when I was confronted with the challenge of opposing this bill,
02:11and I should say retire, not resign, I'm still here,
02:14was to make the point that getting this policy right is more important than me getting re-elected.
02:22That I think that the Medicaid policy in this bill is so fundamentally flawed, if we don't correct it,
02:29that my colleagues, red state or blue state Republicans, purple state Republicans,
02:34and red state Republicans may end up being guilty of almost the identical mistake that Barack Obama made
02:43when he forced Obamacare down our throats without seeking a single Republican vote to get policy that made sense.
02:52I was so convinced that Obama was wrong that I quit my job and worked full time
02:59to get the North Carolina legislature ready for only being in the majority for the second time since the Civil War.
03:06I was so convinced the policy was going to be wrong a year before it got implemented.
03:12The Democrats overreached, and I became the second Republican Speaker of the House in North Carolina since the Civil War,
03:19based on a bad health care decision.
03:23The policy that the House sent us in the reconciliation bill was good policy for Medicaid.
03:31It had a work requirement, which I support.
03:34It had all kinds of policies for waste, fraud, and abuse that made sense,
03:40and it saved $100 billion over 10 years.
03:45But then somebody in the White House tried to convince the Senate
03:49that they should up the ante for $200 billion more in revenue
03:54to pass policy that will have, I think, irreparable damage,
04:01not only in the policy but the politics.
04:03But we have time to fix it.
04:06And the reason I came to the floor today on the birthday of Medicaid, Mr. President,
04:10is to say I believe the President does not want to harm qualified beneficiaries of Medicaid.
04:17This bill will, in its current form.
04:22There's a way to fix it.
04:24There's a way to have President Trump's legacy on delivering on his promise
04:31to not push people off of Medicaid and government support systems who qualify for it.
04:37I'm not talking about the ones that probably shouldn't be on it.
04:40There's a way to fix it.
04:41But if we don't fix it, I believe that our President's legacy,
04:46President Trump, who I've supported,
04:48I've supported in each one of his election efforts,
04:52I support to this day his legacy is at risk
04:55if we don't recognize we're done and we move on to the next thing.
05:00We don't have to touch a line of the tax policy.
05:04We could have a discussion about some of the renewable energy,
05:07but I'm not going to have that discussion.
05:09I want to have discussion about something that I believe could be Republicans' Obamacare.
05:16Now, there are some states who probably are not affected substantially,
05:20but the majority are.
05:22And I believe if we come together and work on this policy
05:26and also work on the policy that's set to expire at the end of September,
05:31and that's some of the subsidies for the health care exchanges for Obamacare,
05:35we could get this right,
05:36and this President's legacy will be righting the mistake that was made by Obama
05:40and avoiding the mistake that his advisors have told him he should pursue.
05:46And so I want the President of the United States,
05:48my colleagues in the Senate body,
05:50to know I am unbridled by any political considerations for the next 17 months.
05:57And I stand ready to work with my Republican colleagues and Democrats
06:02who are willing to be bipartisan and do something right
06:06for a health care policy here to get this right.
06:10And if I do nothing else in my remaining 17 months,
06:13that's worth the effort.
06:15Thank you, Mr. President.
06:17Oh, and Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent
06:19to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to the Kent nomination.
