TRANSCRIPT: Leader Schumer Remarks At Press Conference On Senate Republicans Prioritizing Tax Cuts For Billionaires And Corporations Over Families In The “Big, Ugly Bill”

Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke at a press conference regarding the impacts of Senate Republicans’ version of the “Big, Ugly Betrayal,” outlining how it is more destructive than the House version on tax cuts, Medicaid cuts, firearm provisions and more. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks:

Leader Schumer: So as you know, in the last three weeks, the first week we focused on Medicaid, the second week on rising costs for families and lost jobs in America, and this third week we're talking about taxes. But they're all related because we all know what they're doing. They're giving tax cuts to the billionaires and hurting, whether it's on Medicaid, on SNAP, or so many other issues, including taxes themselves—hurting the average person in the American family, as you can see, red, red, red, red, red, red, until you get to be rich.

And for weeks, Senate Republicans promised they'd take their dangerous, unpopular House bill and fix its worst provisions. Senators went home and told their constituents, "Oh, don't worry, this'll change, that'll change." They said they were listening to their constituents. They lied. They lied. Many of them claimed they would draw red lines on cuts to Medicaid or clean energy or food assistance. But now we know the truth. But now that we've seen the Senate Republicans' “Big, Beautiful Betrayal,” we know what's in it. They didn't fix or improve the House bill—they made it far, far worse. The Senate Republican bill is, simply put, bigger cuts, bigger betrayal. Here are five ways—there are many, but I thought I'd point out five, and please indulge me a minute—that the Senate bill is even worse, more extreme, more destructive, more cruel than the House version.

One, the Medicaid cuts are deeper, with more pain, more people losing their health care. Now it's over a trillion dollars. The House bill originally was $880 billion at its peak. Sixteen million Americans—maybe more—will lose health care. Tens of millions more will have their insurance premiums, their health insurance premiums go way up. So it's going to hurt a large chunk of America, just about all of working-class America, including middle-class America. The Republicans in the Senate have loved to talk about protecting Medicaid. A whole bunch of them called it a red line. But with this bill, it's not a red line, it's a dare. Their plan guts health care even more than the House bill. Democrats are happy to work with Republicans to rid Medicaid of any waste, fraud, or abuse. But this isn't that. This is repeal and replace by another name. The Senate bill squeezes hospitals even harder than the House bill. It crushes health centers and decimates rural hospitals. The health care sector alone would lose close to a million jobs. When you add that to the clean energy job loss, you’re pointing at a recession.

Second, the clean energy bill, it kills jobs and raises costs. Senate Republicans spent weeks promising everybody, including their governors, including the companies and unions and others who are working in all of this new clean energy manufacturing, that they would change the House bill. Instead, the Senate clean energy proposal is a head fake. They try to make it seem like they're making it better, but they don't, particularly in the core areas of wind and solar. The Senate clean energy bill cuts are every bit as destructive as the House proposal. It phases out credits for wind and solar within six months. These phase-outs are a death sentence for clean energy. They're going to send electric bills soaring, kill good-paying jobs. An estimated 850,000 people in the clean energy industry will lose their jobs.  And despite all the rhetoric from Trump and the Republicans, we're going to surrender U.S. energy independence to China. China will dominate, particularly in the fastest, cheapest way to bring new electrons onto the grid, which is solar. China's going to dominate and have American consumers by their neck. The cuts will choke America's energy output right as we need to expand our capacity. AI is going to demand huge amounts of electricity. It's going to cost the consumer more as prices go up. Why the hell would you cut off the quickest, cheapest way to bring in new power? And some of those who say on the Republican side, we’re for all of the above, we don't like the Democrats being against fossil fuels. Well, fossil fuels get lots of tax breaks. They always have. Now they're eliminating them just for clean energy.

Three, gun violence. Now can you believe this? That horrible House provision on gun silencers saying you no longer had to go through a background check to use a gun silencer, and the only people who use silencers are bad people. Cops don't like silencers. Average citizens don't like silencers. Only somebody who's going to shoot and doesn't want it to be known they're shooting. But they made it worse. I'm the author of the Brady law. I'm the author of the assault weapons ban. I know the history. And one of the bottom lines for everybody in the past, even Republicans, is that shotguns and rifles should have background checks. Guess what? They took them away in the Senate bill. Years of history and compromise, years of saying everyone knew that these guns were too dangerous, they took it off. Now if they get their way, silencers, as in the House bill, and shotguns and rifles added in the Senate bill will not need a background check. Anyone, any criminal can get them. Now we are contesting this and other provisions in the Byrd Bath. We're hopeful we can win. We'll see what happens. But we are contesting it in every way we can because Senate Republicans are choosing the gun lobby over the lives of our kids. I don't know what happened. I can surmise. A bunch of the right-wingers said, we didn't get all the cuts we wanted. So they said, we'll give you this. Who knows?

Fourth, attacking our courts. Speaking of fighting against a radical plan by the Senate Republicans, look at what they're doing to the courts. Now, you might be confused. You say, this is a tax bill. Why are Republicans trying to push something on the courts? Well do the math. Trump is losing in court over 95% of the time. Some of us have been plaintiffs in suits, many times. Other times, we've worked with other groups and we were amici, or just helped them. We're winning in the courts. And you know, all too frequently, guess who's siding with us? Judges Trump appointed in his first term. The House bill would have prevented courts from enforcing injunctions if plaintiffs didn't put up massive security bonds. The Senate, not to be outdone, makes it worse—preventing courts from even issuing injunctions against the federal government in the first place if plaintiffs don't put up a massive, unaffordable-to-so-many security bond. So they're trying to make the justice system pay-to-play. Pay-to-play for our sacred, respected—until now—relatively following the law. Not always, unfortunately, particularly with this new Supreme Court. But they're changing it. If you don't have money, you don't get justice. That's never been the American way. They're doing—Senate Republicans are doing—Trump's bidding, and they're trying to protect him by stopping courts from issuing injunctions. This is our democracy. We're going after it. We're not going down without a fight. This and many other provisions—the gun provision and many others—we are challenging with the parliamentarian because we don't think it meets the actual criteria for that.

And finally, on taxes, where my two colleagues, members of the Finance Committee, will elaborate. But given all these devastating cuts, you'd have to assume the Republicans would say, okay, we'll lower the national debt. Nope, quite the opposite. CBO yesterday said that the House-passed bill would increase the debt by $3.4 trillion, surging interest rates on every American. That means when you buy a home, you buy a car, you use a credit card, you're going to pay more because of the tax cuts for billionaires. Now, it's not even considering the Senate bill—that was $3.4 trillion. It's even more generous than the House and locks these tax breaks. And here they are. Look at the very top 10%—get a nice increase in their income. Look at the others. Of course, people lose $2,500. That's a lot of money for anybody, but if you're poor, it's devastating. Under the so-called middle-class provisions, the wealthiest 0.1% get an average tax cut of $400,000. What does it mean to your family? Fewer benefits. Higher costs. We're going to do everything we can with the court of public opinion and in the vote-a-rama process to show the hypocrisy of what the Republicans are doing.

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