Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On How Donald Trump’s “Big, Ugly Bill” Will Gut Healthcare For Millions Of Americans Across The Country

Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on how Donald Trump’s “Big, Ugly Bill” will raise the cost of healthcare for millions of Americans, and cause millions more to lose their coverage, all in order to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Donald Trump and his so-called “Big, Beautiful bill” is ugly to its very core.

Behind the smoke and mirrors lies a cruel and draconian truth: tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy paid for by gutting health care for millions of Americans.

Over the past few days, Donald Trump has tried to sell this bill to Republican Senators with a new lie. He’s been telling Republican Senators – and the American people – that no one will lose coverage. That no benefits will be slashed. That the bill won’t harm recipients.

Let’s call this what it is: a lie. People will lose coverage. Millions will. Donald Trump is lying to the American people when he says no one will lose coverage under this ugly bill.

There is no way for Republicans to seek the cuts they want without removing millions of people off their health care in one way or another.

I warn my Republican Senate colleagues: do not to buy Donald Trump’s snake oil sales pitch.

Republicans want to cut out waste, fraud, and abuse?

Good, we’ll help them do it. This bill certainly isn’t that.

Make no mistake – this “big beautiful bill” is, in reality, “repeal and replace” by another name.

This is a healthcare bill to its core.

To cut through the lies, let’s talk facts:

Fact: under this bill, 20 million Americans will see their health care costs go up.

Fact: 14 million Americans – including children and seniors – will lose their coverage entirely.

Fact: the vast majority of adult Medicaid recipients – an overwhelming majority – already work. Many of them will be thrown off coverage anyway.

Fact, this bill would cause millions to lose health care.

Donald Trump wants to talk fraud? Republicans want to talk fraud? Fine. The fraud we actually see in Medicaid isn’t coming from families making ends meet, it’s coming from the top: large providers, unscrupulous bigwigs.  

The reality is that most fraud in Medicaid happens not with individual enrollees, but at the level of hospitals and health care providers. Not all of them, not most of them, but a handful who do fraud. It’s more than a handful, but it’s not all of them.

But Donald Trump is doing nothing to hold them accountable. Just the opposite: the other day he pardoned a nursing home executive who skimmed $10 million from the paychecks of nurses, doctors, and other employees.

Do you hear that, folks? Donald Trump, who says he wants to reduce fraud, just pardoned a nursing home executive who skimmed $10 million from the paychecks of his employees.

The reality is that there is not enough fraud in Medicaid and the ACA to make Republicans’ math work. They know it. Republicans may not want to admit it publicly, but they know that under their current proposal, millions of Americans – including millions who are employed, who have families – will lose their health care coverage.

Republicans want to shorten the enrollment period.

They want to bury families in red tape.

They want to drown states in new administrative hurdles.

Republicans’ strategy in large part is to make it so difficult for people to sign up for health, so easy to fall through the cracks, that tens of millions of Americans will simply lose coverage. And it would be by design. Just look at Project 2025.

Senate Republicans can make jokes all they want that “we’re all going to die” anyway, but for many working class Americans, health care is the difference between life and death.

Let me be clear: Democrats are ready.

When Republicans finally release the full text of their so-called “Big, Beautiful bill,” the American people will see the truth. They'll see how ugly it is.

And we will fight it – with facts, with urgency, and with the voices of the millions of Americans who deserve better than this cruel, cynical attack on their health and on their dignity.

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