Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Donald Trump And Republicans Shutting Down The Government By Refusing To Negotiate With Democrats To Save Americans’ Healthcare
Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans shutting the government down by refusing to engage in bipartisan negotiations to protect Americans’ healthcare and Trump using the American people as pawns in this shutdown fight, emphasizing the need for Republicans to come to the table and negotiate for the good of American families. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:
Today is October 1st – the first full day of Donald Trump’s government shutdown.
Donald Trump and Republicans have barreled us into a shutdown because they refused to protect Americans’ healthcare.
It’s clear that the way out of this shutdown is to sit down and negotiate with Democrats to address the looming healthcare crisis that faces tens of millions of American families.
Democrats want to avert this crisis. But Republicans tried to bully us and it’s clear they can’t. They don’t have the votes.
The way out of this is for Republicans finally roll up their sleeves and get to work. Republicans need to get serious and start actually addressing the looming crisis and reopen the government.
Now, why has all of this happened? Why are we here on October 1st? Because Republicans have tried to stick us with a partisan CR that fails to protect Americans’ healthcare and does nothing – nothing – to fix the healthcare mess that they created.
It has now failed twice to get enough votes in this chamber.
And Speaker Johnson has got to get his people here. If anyone wanted evidence as to who wanted this shutdown, just look at the fact that Speaker Johnson does not even have the House in session.
When Democrats had the White House, the Senate, and the House, when Democrats had the majority in this chamber, when I was majority leader, we never had one shutdown in four years. Not one.
You know why?
Because we worked with our Republican colleagues to find a way to keep the government funded.
We did it 13 times, as Leader Thune likes to remind everyone. That is a lot of bipartisan negotiation.
But not so this time. Not so today.
Republicans need to negotiate.
Today is October 1st. That means that something else is happening today. Throughout the country people are opening their mailboxes and finding letters telling them that their health insurance is about to go way, way, way up.
The other day, we thought it was $400 a month that the average American family would pay more in insurance premiums. But it turns out it’s even worse than that.
A Kaiser report – the nonpartisan, well-respected Kaiser report – from yesterday says it’s now on average $1,000 a month, and, God forbid, much more for many Americans.
Healthcare premiums, because of what the Republicans have done, are going up an average of 114% a year.
The average premium is going to more than double.
What’s the average American family supposed to do with that?
What happens on Friday night when the family sits around the kitchen table and says: how are we going to pay the bills? Especially when they see that their insurance – health insurance, vital to the parents and the children of the family – could be a thousand dollars more a month? What are they going to do? The average American can't afford a thousand dollars a month, or even $400 a month, without cutting back on their healthcare or cutting back on something else that's vital.
You know, Americans are saying the number one issue is costs. They now rate Donald Trump worse on costs than they rated Joe Biden, and he didn't have very good ratings.
It's the tariffs. It's the change in electricity costs, because of what they've done with the cheapest and cleanest source of energy and putting electrons on the grid, which is solar. They got rid of it in their fanatical hatred of clean energy. Now they're putting money into coal. It's incredible.
Because of costs of groceries and of meat.
But the number one increase in costs now, on October 1st, is healthcare costs.
And the average American is going to say: what the heck happened here?
And we Democrats are going to be there every day, every hour, the Senate, the House, groups that care about healthcare, hospital groups, healthcare groups, research groups, letting them know this didn't have to happen. It happened because our Republican colleagues wanted to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut their healthcare.
It's incredible.
Three times we asked our Republican colleagues to extend the ACA tax credit. Three times they voted no.
Well, it's not too late. They could change. When I met with the president, he seemed not to know the magnitude of the crisis, and he said that this is going to hurt him. I’m sure it will. It's going to hurt every American.
What's motivating Democrats, and what's motivating me, is simply to take this burden off the shoulders of tens of millions of American families who struggle each week to pay the bills. They don't need this huge increase in something as vital as health insurance.
And the Republicans sort of know this. So, what do they do? They make up lies, absolute lies. They say what they're fighting to do is prevent illegal immigrants from getting federal healthcare dollars. That is a damn lie.
Not one dollar of Medicare, Medicaid, or the ACA is allowed to go to undocumented immigrants. Not a dollar.
Why do they keep saying this? This seems to be their theme. They're afraid to speak to the real issue. It’s the typical Republican response – a diversion to try to scare people emotionally.
To the average American family, that one thousand dollar a month increase, or $400 a month increase, on their healthcare bills means a lot more than political crap put in the air – lies by our Republican colleagues. So, I was very glad this morning that some of the commentators on TV said that. When Republicans say that undocumented immigrants are going to get this money, it’s a lie, plain and simple. It’s a lie so lazy and so outlandish that it’s easy to rebut.
Let me be perfectly clear: undocumented people cannot and will not receive premium tax credits by law.
The federal government does not fund health insurance for undocumented immigrants in Medicaid or Medicare. Period. Full stop.
But Republicans don’t care. Why? Because they know the American people are on our side, and they know they're going to get angrier and angrier starting today, when they see these healthcare bills.
Listen to this poll: a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found a whopping 75% of Americans support extending the ACA premium tax credits, including 63% of Republicans.
When our Republican Senate and House colleagues go around their communities – of course, the House isn't even here this week, as I mentioned – they're going to hear it in the barbershops, and the restaurants, the diners, the little leagues and veterans halls, because it's so shocking. People are going to be talking about it. They'll see.
And we Democrats are going to be there relentlessly letting people know why it happened: because our Republican colleagues did not want to help us out of this crisis. Instead, they wanted to give the dollars to billionaires.
President Trump said what the Democrats want is radical.
President Trump, it is not radical to say Americans deserve lower healthcare premiums. It is not radical to say we can prevent the average American family from getting these huge increases on ACA by up to a thousand dollars a month.
When Democrats say we want to work with Republicans to lower premiums and to strengthen healthcare, all we are doing is reflecting what the American people already want. Nothing more. Nothing less. They want us to sit down and negotiate something real that takes this huge burden off their shoulders.
And Donald Trump, instead of acting like an adult – he’s the most immature president we have ever had – instead of doing something to stop the healthcare crisis, is threatening to hurt countless hardworking Americans.
Let me repeat the quote Donald Trump said yesterday: “We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible. They are bad for them and irreversible. Like cutting vast numbers of people out. Cutting things that they like. Cutting programs that they like.”
Donald Trump says it loud and clear: he is using the American people as pawns, threatening pain on the country as blackmail.
Well, that’s not going to work. The American people see through those tactics. They know this is the Trump shutdown.
They know Republicans control the presidency, the Senate, and the House, and what is done during a shutdown will fall squarely on the Republicans’ backs.
Donald Trump even says it. He says he is going to close down all these things people want. It's going to fall right on his back.
The American people will know who's doing it, and he's going to have to recoil from it, just as they have done with so many cuts already, even before October 1st, and they had to back off on many of them – some because of the courts, but some because of public outcry, such as the huge cutbacks they made in the VA.
Well, Democrats’ position hasn’t changed.
We are willing, ready, and able to negotiate.
We are ready to reopen the government today.
We have made our position clear about how to move forward.
Surely we can come together and agree we need to fix healthcare. And that needs to happen now, as people are getting these incredible increases. And within a few weeks, they're going to have to say if they'll keep their healthcare, or have to cut it back, or do something else that hurts them because they don't have the money.
If Republicans work with us and fix America’s healthcare crisis, the shutdown could go away very quickly.
And that's what Democrats want: to end this now and to fix healthcare now.
It is the right thing to do for the American people.
We urge our Republican colleagues and we urge President Trump to take yes for an answer.
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