During his epic filibuster, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) slammed President Trump's cuts to medical research.
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NewsTranscript
00:00:00answer a question while retaining the floor. I'm going to continue with a
00:00:05little bit more here before we change topics for the night. I want to point out
00:00:11how grateful I am for my friend Chris Murphy. The last time I stood on this
00:00:16floor for many hours was just in support, doing like my colleague is doing for me
00:00:22right now after the Pulse shooting. We wanted to vote on common-sense gun
00:00:28safety. Bipartisan supported common-sense gun safety. We didn't get it.
00:00:32Chris Murphy right down there held the floor for 15 hours and I paced around,
00:00:40walked the floor, helped to support things, stayed up with him all night. And
00:00:43it is profound to me that when I told my brother that I wanted to cause some good
00:00:49trouble, that I was gonna rise, that he said, I'm in. I'm in. And so there he is
00:00:55helping me out, especially as we approach 11 o'clock at night and the
00:01:02fourth hour. I'm just grateful for him. I'm grateful for him. I want to go now to
00:01:08cuts that are being made to local and state health department funding. And
00:01:12again, Republican and Democratic governors, we have letters from people on
00:01:17both sides of the aisle who are saying that this is just wrong and it makes no
00:01:25sense, but here we go. It's actually a really what I would call a dangerous
00:01:29reversal that Trump's HHS recently announced the cancellation of
00:01:34almost 12 billion in federal grants that state and local health departments have
00:01:39been using to track infectious diseases, health disparities, vaccinations, mental
00:01:44health, substance use, and services. Because of that reversal, my state, for
00:01:50example, is going to lose 350 million in federal funding for health programs due
00:01:55to these cuts. My governor, Phil Murphy, said that these cuts would create an
00:02:00unfillable void in funding that will have disastrous ramifications for our
00:02:05most vulnerable neighbors. Last week, we learned that HHS planned to cut an
00:02:11additional 10,000 jobs. In total, since January, HHS has cut 20,000 of its
00:02:16employees. That's over a quarter of its workforce. These are people who inspect
00:02:22nursing homes to ensure that they're safe, they improve diagnostic and
00:02:26treatment services for children, regulate health insurance to make sure that they
00:02:30are not discriminating against you based on your health conditions and health
00:02:36status, to protect you from infectious diseases, conduct inspections to make
00:02:42sure that infant formula is safe. And I want to tell you that Secretary
00:02:55Kennedy has committed to bringing radical transparency to the HHS. I
00:03:00would love radical transparency. But at the end of February, Secretary Kennedy
00:03:04announced that HHS is no longer required to undergo the public comment period, a
00:03:10practice that's taken place at the agency since 1971. Another critical
00:03:17resource of health information for the American public is the CDC's Morbidity
00:03:22and Mortality Weekly Report. That has been published since 1952 and is often
00:03:29called the voice of the CDC. But unfortunately, on January 23rd, the first
00:03:37time since its inception, the report was not published in a direct response to
00:03:42the Trump administration's freeze on public communications. In addition to
00:03:47pausing the critical publication, it also reported that the Pregnancy Risk
00:03:52Assessment Monitoring System had halted operation. The pregnancy, this PRAMS,
00:04:00which was developed in 1987, is designed to identify groups of women and infants
00:04:05at high risk for health problems, to monitor changes in health status, and to
00:04:09measure progress towards goals and improving the health of mothers and
00:04:13infants. Over the last 38 years, the program has collected essential data on
00:04:21maternal behaviors and experiences before, during, and shortly after
00:04:26pregnancy. Maternal care providers rely on that data collected by PRAMS. The
00:04:34sole source of this type of information to enhance prenatal and postnatal care.
00:04:40The U.S. is in the midst of a mortality crisis, which we mentioned before. We have
00:04:46the highest rate of maternal deaths of any high-income nation. As I learned when
00:04:51I was a mayor, data is power. You can't manage a problem unless you have
00:04:57measures on the problem. To pull back things like that, again, you're reducing
00:05:03transparency, you're cutting back on vital reports that people who are trying
00:05:08to meet this crisis rely on to inform their strategies. And again, here's the
00:05:14frustration, is that we are the worst in maternal health outcomes for developed
00:05:20nations, but even in our country, African-American women are three
00:05:26times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than the
00:05:29majority. This is one of the countries where it's profoundly dangerous to have
00:05:34kids, and again, this is yet another thing that HHS is doing that's leaving us more
00:05:40vulnerable, less informed, less empowered to deal with the health challenges that
00:05:45we still deal with. Since the Trump administration made the disastrous
00:05:49decision for agencies to pause external communications, we've been seeing
00:05:54significant delays in critical information from other key agencies.
00:05:59There have been avoidable delays in critical data from the CDC that states
00:06:06are starting to speak out, saying that they need to protect the health of their
00:06:11communities. As of March 20th, when it comes to vaccines, what we're seeing in
00:06:18America talk about getting less safe. There are 378 confirmed cases of measles
00:06:25throughout the United States. As one of my doctor friends said, there are more
00:06:30children with measles right now than there are trans athletes in the NCAA.
00:06:36This is a real crisis. For the first time in a decade, a child who was not
00:06:42vaccinated for measles tragically died in that outbreak. And while measles is
00:06:47spreading across our nation, and we're having one of the worst flu seasons in
00:06:51the last decades, HHS has delayed the convening of critical advisory councils
00:06:56at the CDC and FDA. These advisory councils are responsible for determining
00:07:02the vaccine schedule, what vaccines must be covered by insurance, and the safety,
00:07:07effectiveness, and appropriate use of vaccines. They do essential and timely
00:07:12work to keep people safe, and disruptions to their work can be harmful to the
00:07:17health of the American people. Let me go to the National Institute of Health.
00:07:20It's the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world. It's
00:07:27facing devastating cuts. The NIH is one of the greatest successes in publicly
00:07:33funded scientific research in all of human history. The U.S. is one of the
00:07:37best places to do scientific research because it has had more capacity than
00:07:41any other country to fund and conduct research at the highest levels. Pauses,
00:07:47lapses, and elimination of NIH funding will drive researchers to do their
00:07:53research in other countries, and undermine the efforts to cure diseases,
00:07:58to find solutions to conditions from obesity to Alzheimer's to cancers.
00:08:04One of the best taxpayer dollars we can invest is in NIH because it returns more
00:08:10than five taxpayers dollars back in the breakthroughs that they make. We have
00:08:15put the future of scientific research in the United States at grave threats with
00:08:21what the Trump administration is now doing. They've imposed cuts and a number
00:08:25of harmful orders on the NIH that have both stalled its research and confused
00:08:31its partners. 99.4% of the FDA approved drugs come from the NIH funded research.
00:08:41Let me just say that again. NIH funded research has led to 99.4% of all the FDA
00:08:52drugs that are out there. The NIH funding cuts will directly affect your access to
00:08:59future novel treatments that can improve your quality of life or your
00:09:04children, or if you love your neighbor like the so many religions call us to do
00:09:13with your neighbor's children as well. Here's an example of that. Hepatitis C is
00:09:21a liver disease caused by the virus HCV, and it is one of the most common types
00:09:28of viral hepatitis in the United States. It is estimated that three to four
00:09:33million Americans have hepatitis. In 2014, the first complete
00:09:37treatment for hepatitis C was approved by the FDA. The development of this
00:09:40revolutionary new treatment that has since been used to cure millions of
00:09:44people around the world was funded by, you know, NIH research. This is a type of
00:09:52life-saving innovation we will lose out on if we defund the NIH as the Trump
00:09:59administration is currently doing. American enterprise and knowledge will
00:10:05be drained. We will fall behind. We already know there's fierce competition
00:10:10for the researchers by countries like China. They are aiming, in fact they are
00:10:16upping their investments in scientific research, doing everything they can to
00:10:21keep scientific researchers in their country. I was just talking to an
00:10:25innovator out in the West Coast who was telling me that they're starting to take
00:10:29passports away from their researchers. There's a fierce competition going on to
00:10:33keep the best minds here in this country or be drawn away to other places from
00:10:38Europe to China, and we're stopping our funding? I've heard from academic
00:10:44institutions that are telling me that they're not even offering as many PhD
00:10:47programs in some of these key areas of science because of the attacks that are
00:10:53happening on our universities, all while China is upping their investments in the
00:10:57universities. I can't believe that they're trying to out-America us, and
00:11:02we're trying to turn our back on our most successful traditions. One of his
00:11:09first actions, President Trump's imposed a communications freeze on all
00:11:13US health agencies, effectively silencing some of our nation's top
00:11:17researchers, scientists, and public health experts. This action stalled 16,000 grant
00:11:23applications for around 1.5 billion dollars in NIH funding. The NIH has since
00:11:29begun to incrementally send notices to the Office of the Federal Register to
00:11:35resume reviews. The combination of these actions irresponsibly have stalled our
00:11:40nation's primary source of life-saving biomedical research. It is our
00:11:44understanding that full communications have not been resumed and that it
00:11:48continues to impede critical research at the NIH. As I've been told time and time
00:11:52again by experts in this area, just to pause funding could set research back
00:11:59years, because when you're conducting research, whether it's in a test tube, in
00:12:06biomedical research, you can't pause. Whether it's a human body, in biomedical
00:12:11research, you can't pause. Across the nation, brilliant researchers have been
00:12:17finding out daily that the Trump administration has canceled their
00:12:20research. Research on critical issues like maternal health, long COVID,
00:12:26diabetes, new pharmaceutical drugs, cancer, and so, so much more. The NIH has
00:12:34decided to cancel its 2025 summer internship program. On average, 1,100
00:12:41interns participate in this program each year, helping develop the next generation
00:12:44of scientists and researchers. A small number of summer interns had already
00:12:49been accepted their offer to join the NIH in 2025. The decision follows the
00:12:54Trump administration's federal hiring freeze. Again, in my faith, there's a
00:13:00saying, train a child in the way he shall go, and he will not depart from it.
00:13:04These are our young people. These are the future scientists now, aren't getting the
00:13:09experience of the lifetime. I've met people in this institution who first
00:13:12came here as college summer interns.
00:13:20The NIH has decided not only to cancel those internships, but to shut the door
00:13:27to many kids who had already made their summer plans. Many people here know what
00:13:32it's like to have a summer plan, have a summer internship, not apply for other
00:13:36ones. It's another act of just meanness and cruelty. Let this class come in and
00:13:41then say, okay, I'm going to cut the program next year, but the way they're
00:13:44doing things is mean and cruel and having an impact on people's lives.
00:13:49Congressionally directed medical research programs. I've worked across the
00:13:55aisle with my colleagues. I have friends in here that have worked with me on
00:14:01specific diseases in a bipartisan way. I'm so proud of some of that work.
00:14:08Well, we've long appropriated about 1.5 billion dollars a year in federal funds
00:14:14for medical research, nearly half of which typically goes to cancer. It's
00:14:20something that we have found common ground on in my 12 years here in
00:14:23significant stretches. The medical research program was
00:14:28created and sustained by Congress, competitively awards funds to hundreds
00:14:34of projects each year at both the Defense Department labs and outside
00:14:38research institutions, including at many American universities, to study
00:14:42everything again from cancer to battlefield wounds to suicide
00:14:48prevention. In 2024, a hundred and thirty million dollars was specifically
00:14:53appropriated in a bipartisan way in this body, incredibly good senators of good
00:15:00conscience coming together and saying we should do more in these areas. They
00:15:05approved 130 million dollars for research in breast, kidney, lung,
00:15:14melanoma, ovarian, pancreatic, prostate, and a handful of very rare cancers. Why?
00:15:25Because they're people of good conscience here. We meet folks who come to this, not
00:15:32lobbyists, they come and they tell us about their stories of rare cancers.
00:15:36There are people on both sides of the aisle that have marched for prostate
00:15:40awareness, for breast cancer awareness. There's a goodness and decency here, but
00:15:47in 2024, this funding, it's a bill that passed in March, it was now slashed,
00:15:59slashed by 57 percent. And I told you earlier, that data, one of the best
00:16:09taxpayer dollars we can spend is in medical research. We've all heard this in
00:16:15this body when the NIH has come thrown and shown a dollar invested could get
00:16:21more than five dollars back. Any Wall Street executive that would get five
00:16:24times their money back from an investment, who is this helping? And do we
00:16:31think about the people? I thank God. I don't have many family members that are
00:16:42going about your day, go to the doctor, come back with a cancer. I know lots of
00:16:46people, though. I know their stories. When they're diagnosed with a cancer and
00:16:55they're told there's no cure. I've seen people go through what you go through
00:17:05with that. And so how could the country that has led humanity for more than a
00:17:14generation or two, suddenly have a president come along and say, I'm gonna
00:17:21slash all of these things, and oh, by the way, I'm gonna give billionaires a big
00:17:26tax cut. So what do we say when these folks come to our office? Some of
00:17:39the people with rare diseases came to my office a couple weeks ago, and the
00:17:44amount of their funding is so small. And maybe if it was to solve our
00:17:52budget deficit, if we're gonna do this as a country, we got to come together in a
00:17:55bipartisan way. I'm one of these Democrats that believes it's a
00:18:00real crisis. But we are not solving the deficit in what they're proposing here.
00:18:08They're cutting and cutting and cutting things that make no sense to cut, and
00:18:13they're doing it for a tax breaks which disproportionately go to the wealthiest
00:18:20and to rack up even more debt. I want to read this article, and my staff told me
00:18:30that we have lots of sections to go through and it's been four hours and 11
00:18:35minutes, but this is one that hurts me because I've met so many people who fall
00:18:41into this category. I want to read an article that deals with an issue called
00:18:47medical debt and the ongoing impact it has on people as part of their lives. The
00:18:54Affordable Care Act, when we did that, we lowered the costs and
00:18:59implemented protections for Americans, requiring insurers to cover pre-existing
00:19:05conditions, expanding Medicaid, which we've talked about a lot tonight,
00:19:10implementing caps on out-of-pocket costs for Americans. All of these helped
00:19:15in alleviating medical bankruptcy for some. Medical bankruptcies in
00:19:22America have gone down, but not all. We still live in a country where one of the
00:19:28top reasons for bankruptcy is medical debt. One of my staffers kind of shook me
00:19:33with the reality she was dealing with, which is she's got stratospheric medical
00:19:38debt. So here's an article from Healthcare Insights. It's not a
00:19:44partisan rag, it's a scientific journal. How medical debt is crushing 100 million
00:19:53Americans. It's from October of last year. This author, I just want to give a little
00:20:01more understanding of what kind of article this is, it's John August. He is
00:20:04the Scheinman Institute's Director of Healthcare. George Curley is one of 52
00:20:11million people, or one-third of Americans in the workforce, who earn $15 an hour or
00:20:18less. I had the opportunity to interview George recently about the experience,
00:20:22about his experience with medical debt and how it has impacted his life. Having
00:20:28suffered an industrial accident, and even though his employer was responsible for
00:20:32his injuries, and he carried health insurance, he still accumulated $20,000
00:20:40in medical debt. George grew up in Dallas and spent his life working hard as a
00:20:46full-time warehouse and retail worker. At one point in his life, he found a job and
00:20:51he joined, enjoyed working as a forklift driver in a factory that produced
00:20:56ceramic tile. In time, he switched jobs working on the production line. One
00:21:01fateful day, a piece of metal struck him in the foot. He had to have surgery and
00:21:07underwent the amputation of one of his toes. He had to take a month off from
00:21:12work, and when he returned, he went back to driving the forklift. He found that
00:21:17due to his accident and surgery, he couldn't operate the forklift to his
00:21:23satisfaction. He became frustrated in not being able to operate the forklift. He
00:21:28grew depressed and left the job. It took me three months to get back on my feet
00:21:32after the toe amputation. There were nursing care for two months to help me
00:21:37work again. This life-saving medical procedure left me with over $20,000 in
00:21:42debt, even with insurance! I avoided doing necessary
00:21:48follow-up with doctors due to not being able to afford additional care. There
00:21:53were hard times on top of this. I suffered a great deal of depression due
00:21:56to losing my job during my leave of absence. This medical debt is currently
00:22:00following me. There was a point of time that I was rebuilding my credit. Before
00:22:04the surgery, I built it up by over 120 points. With the medical
00:22:12debt on my credit report, my credit score dropped 60 points. The big drop in score
00:22:17has not allowed me to get my own place. I'm not able to continue to pursue my
00:22:21dream of being a voice actor due to not having proper financial footing to get
00:22:25back to school. I can travel and do things I would like to do. I can't travel
00:22:29and do things I'd like to do. I'm working, but things are very financially tight.
00:22:34The medicine I need is being paid out of pocket. After paying my bills, I'm in the
00:22:40negative. There is no money left over to pay my medical debt. I can't save money
00:22:44right now, not even towards retirement. To have this medical debt on my credit
00:22:49score means not being able to pursue a better life. He went on short-term
00:22:54disability for a while, but then found the part-time job he holds now at
00:22:59Walgreens. He had to return to work to pay for the house he and his brothers
00:23:03had purchased. Through this period, George had to take payday loans, and between
00:23:09those loans and his weekly wages, he attempted to pay back the money he owed
00:23:13the hospitals. He learned that because of his medical debt, his credit rating was
00:23:18destroyed by credit agencies, who learned that he had fallen behind on his
00:23:21payments to the hospitals. According to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau,
00:23:26which I guess barely exists now, 100 million Americans owe 220 billion in
00:23:33medical debt. 100 million Americans owe 220 billion dollars in medical debt.
00:23:40George told me that the medical debt has had several devastating impacts on his
00:23:45life. Inability to borrow money for a mortgage or a car, employees ask for
00:23:50credit reports, and reports that show an applicant for a position are often
00:23:56rejected to a poor credit report. This has impacted his ability to find a
00:24:01better job than his part-time job at $15 an hour, with no benefits, working at
00:24:05Walgreens, where he lives in Garland, Texas. Incredible stress that further
00:24:09impacts his health conditions, including diabetes. An additional note, Garland, Texas,
00:24:15where George lives, is near Dallas, which includes Garland and Dallas, and is a
00:24:20locality with high medical debt and high profit for health care systems in
00:24:26the region. Though George makes very low wages, medical debt is a broadly shared
00:24:31experience by Americans across income groups. Clearly, low-wage workers
00:24:36suffer the worst burden, but the problem is pervasive and a broad feature of
00:24:43American life. Some background. In the off-sited study, as many as 65.5% of
00:24:51people who file for bankruptcy blame medical bills as a primary cause. I'm
00:24:54going to repeat that in the article. 66.5% of Americans who file for bankruptcy
00:25:00blame medical bills as their primary cause. Two-thirds of Americans who are
00:25:05filing bankruptcy point to medical bills as the cause. As many as 550,000 people
00:25:12file for bankruptcy every year for this reason. More than half of a million
00:25:15Americans, year after year after year after year after year after year, for no
00:25:21fault of their own, because of a metal bar shoved up through his toe, because of a
00:25:26diagnosis of cancer, because of diabetes, because of things outside of their
00:25:31control, they rack up medical debt that, as this man, can erode their well-being.
00:25:41This data has been known about how many Americans affected and has continued
00:25:46even with the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Lesser known is the amount of
00:25:50medical debt that Americans carry. What are the causes of this burden on so many?
00:25:54Well, more Americans have health insurance today than ever before. Coverage has many
00:25:59gaps. High deductibles and narrow networks which prevent patients from
00:26:03seeking health providers of their choice and common cause of accumulation of high
00:26:08cost bills. When patients understandably seek care from a preferred provider, too
00:26:14often that care is not covered. Most health care plans only provide 80% of
00:26:19payment for covered costs. 20% patient responsibility of high
00:26:26medical bills can leave people unable to pay their bills. Approximately 14
00:26:30million people in America, 6% of adults in the U.S. owe over a thousand dollars
00:26:38in medical debt and about 3 million people, 1% of Americans, owe medical debt
00:26:42of more than 10 grand. Additionally, this government report identifies many of the
00:26:49components of medical debt which are completely out of control of the patient.
00:26:53In most cases, these practices are unlawful, but hospitals use these tactics
00:26:59frequently to press patients to pay, including double billing. Companies can
00:27:07not attempt to collect on medical bills that have already been paid by the
00:27:11consumer insurance or a government program such as Medicaid or Medicaid. This
00:27:15practice can coerce consumers into paying twice for the same service.
00:27:21Expanding legal limits. Companies must not attempt to collect amounts that
00:27:25surpass federal or state caps such as those set by the Federal No Surpass Act
00:27:30or state laws on reasonable rates. These violations can saddle consumers with
00:27:35unjustly high medical debts, burdening their finances. Falsified or fake charges.
00:27:40Debt collectors must not collect on bills that include upcoded or exaggerated
00:27:45services or charges at service the consumer did not receive. Collecting
00:27:51unsubstantiated medical debts. Debt collectors must not attempt to collect
00:27:54medical debts. These are all awful practices that go on. Here's Paul Sugar's
00:28:00story. Compelling and tragic. Paul spent much of his life, starting as a child,
00:28:08as learning about jewelry, living in a small town near Albuquerque, New Mexico.
00:28:15At an early age, he earned enough money selling silver and turquoise necklaces
00:28:19to be able to buy a motorcycle. As he became an adult, he devoted, developed a
00:28:24successful business in the mining and selling of silver and turquoise used in
00:28:29making jewelry. He also worked at GE, the GE engine plant, but was laid off during
00:28:36the time of industrial downsizing. He went to work for Quest, installing
00:28:41communications infrastructure, but was laid off from that job when Quest was
00:28:44acquired by US West. So he returned to his business. On January 9th, 2019, he was
00:28:50terribly injured in a fire at his home. He is still recovering physically and
00:28:54economically. After losing 66% of his skin and getting care at a specialty
00:29:02trauma unit in another part of the country, he ended up owing over $82,000
00:29:08in medical bills. The medical debt on his credit report means he has not been able
00:29:14to get loans to expand his business and earn more after the fire. His medical
00:29:19bills totaled $550,000. Insurance covered most of it, but it was still more than he
00:29:26could pay. He made payment plans with all of his various bills, but when his credit
00:29:31card number changed, some of the automatic payments he had arranged for
00:29:36did not go through and the bills ended up in collection before he even knew he
00:29:39was behind. Prior to the fire, he always had stellar credit rating, but since this
00:29:43medical debt, it has gone down. In his business, it's important to be able to
00:29:48take out short-term loans to supply the company, but now he can't do that at
00:29:53reasonable terms and rates. He spent his retirement savings account trying to pay
00:29:57back all of his medical bills as a retirement savings, but it wasn't enough.
00:30:01Now he worries about his future. How will he retire? Will he have enough for his
00:30:06daughter's college education? Can he move homes if he needs to? At one point, he
00:30:12needed to replace his car because he and his wife had to travel 18 hours round
00:30:16trips every couple of weeks to receive prescriptions for pain medication. He was
00:30:22denied the credit to do so. Our health care professionals are on the front
00:30:26lines of the impact of medical debt. Doctors and other health care
00:30:31professionals experience firsthand when patients are denied care due to medical
00:30:36debt. This article describes how health care systems deny patients with medical
00:30:40debt. Dr. Matt Hoffman, who was a leader in the successful effort to form a union
00:30:45with Doctors Council in 2023, talked about this problem. They instructed staff
00:30:53to stop providing care to patients with more than $4,500 in overdue bills,
00:30:57going beyond the more common practice of turning such debts over to collection
00:31:02agencies. He and his fellow doctors protested their health care system's
00:31:06decision to deny patients access to care due to medical debt. Minnesota
00:31:10Attorney General Keith Ellison banned the denial of care for patients with
00:31:15medical debt. I mean, these practices sound like they're Byzantine. They sound
00:31:19like they don't sound like America, or at least who we should be.
00:31:31There's a lot of New Jerseyans who are dealing with medical debt. There are a
00:31:35lot of New Jerseyans that are being impacted by these programs that the
00:31:39president has already rolled back. I'm standing today because of this crisis
00:31:45in our country, and one of the strategies that Donald Trump and his
00:31:49team have talked about is to flood the zone, flood the zone, flood the zone, and
00:31:52so sometimes the press doesn't even cover the cutting of some of these programs,
00:31:57some of these benefits that help people who are struggling with medical debt or
00:32:02struggling making ends meet, help them access health care. It's a level of
00:32:07distraction and cruelty, and again, why? Why are they cutting this? They're saying
00:32:12they're trying to make government more efficient, more effective. Well, it's not
00:32:15effective for these folks, and what are the savings going to go to? Is it going
00:32:19to go to expanding medical research, expanding those things that when
00:32:22taxpayers invest money on, they get returned? No, they're cutting medical
00:32:25research. They're cutting the things that empower children to grow up and have
00:32:28healthy, productive lives, and again, what they're aiming to do with it, they're
00:32:35aiming to do with it is to provide massive, massive tax cuts. I'm coming to
00:32:42the end of this section, but there are more voices that I want to include. I'm
00:32:46going to read a few, and then I think I'm going to get a question from my
00:32:50colleague, so a few more pages, if I may, before we begin to dialogue, or at least
00:33:01I'll receive a question, I imagine, but I just want to elevate some of these
00:33:05voices. This is a person writing to me on February 28th. Dear Senator Booker, I'm
00:33:13writing to you as a concerned citizen, and most importantly, as a proud aunt of
00:33:17a PhD in neuroscience, dedicating her life to research that could lead to
00:33:22life-saving treatments. As a minority in science, she has worked incredibly hard
00:33:27to break barriers in the field that is not always welcome to people like her.
00:33:30Watching the current political attacks on research funding is not just
00:33:34heartbreaking, it's dangerous for our country's future. Science is not
00:33:38political. It serves all people, regardless of race, background, or party
00:33:42affiliation. Yes, funding cuts to agencies like NIH and the National
00:33:47Science Foundation threaten to halt critical research, slowing the
00:33:51development of treatment for diseases that impact millions. These cuts will
00:33:55push out brilliant young scientists, many of whom have already had to fight to get
00:33:59where they are to do the research they're doing. This is not just about my
00:34:04niece or scientists in general, it's about every American. Disease does not
00:34:10choose a political party. Cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and countless
00:34:17others affect Republicans and Democrats alike. Without strong investment in
00:34:23research, we are all at risk of losing the chance for better treatments, new
00:34:27cures, and improved health care. Beyond health, the funding science will hurt our
00:34:36economy. Scientific research drives innovation, creates jobs, and ensures that
00:34:42the U.S. remains a global leader. A country that does not invest in science
00:34:47is a country that falls behind. I urge you to continue standing with the
00:34:52scientific community, supporting young researchers from all backgrounds, and
00:34:56fighting to protect and expand research funding. This is one of the most
00:35:00critical investments we can make for health, for economic growth, and for the
00:35:04future of every American. Thank you for your time, leadership, and dedication to
00:35:10building a stronger, smarter, and healthier nation. Couple New Jersey
00:35:16sources. At my university, I make this is a letter from someone in Somerset, New
00:35:21Jersey. At my university, I am extremely concerned that we are not as large an
00:35:27institution as some of the others, and do not get as much state aid. We rely on
00:35:33these funds far more than running facilities. If this goes into effect, it
00:35:38will ultimately lead to the loss of jobs, research, opportunities for students, and
00:35:44will stunt our growth as we embark on a journey to become an R1 institution. I'm
00:35:50not sure we could recover from this anytime soon. Another person on these
00:35:54cuts to the NIH. I'm a postdoctoral researcher performing basic science
00:36:01research on bacterial communication. In short, I'm seeking to understand
00:36:05bacterial chemical communication to find new pathways for therapeutic development.
00:36:11Antibiotic research resistance is already killing thousands of Americans
00:36:15each year. We need new treatments provided by indirect costs to find these
00:36:20cures. Indirect costs actually directly funded my day-to-day work,
00:36:25providing funds for building maintenance staff, university shared resources such
00:36:30as electron microscopes, and common laboratory supplies such as liquid
00:36:34nitrogen. Without any of these resources, my job and those of others researchers
00:36:38seeking new cures would be impossible. Thus, eliminating or reducing these funds
00:36:46will have a negative repercussions on the health and well-being of the
00:36:50American people for generations to come. It's my constituent from Plainsboro, New
00:36:55Jersey. Related to federal grant freeze funding freezes, another New Jerseyan
00:36:59writes, I'm a researcher at the University at University of New Jersey
00:37:02where I conduct study ways to combat cancer and promote infant health.
00:37:08Critical research that ensures generations grow into healthy adults. My
00:37:12aspirations in line with yours, fostering a strong, healthy, and educated population
00:37:17for this region. I urge you, Cory Booker, to take immediate action to restore
00:37:22normal federal grant operations so that my colleagues and I can continue making
00:37:28paradigm-shifting, state-of-the-art discoveries with the potential to save
00:37:33millions of lives. This university is dependent upon federal grants, a
00:37:38testament to the world-class quality of our research and its leadership in the
00:37:45biomedical field. These grants enable groundbreaking advancements that
00:37:49position the United States at the forefront of scientific information. I
00:37:53had planned to apply for a federal grant in 2025 to further my research, but with
00:38:00the current uncertainty, I'm deeply concerned about my application's future.
00:38:05Here's another scientist. My five-year NIH grant is in its second year and
00:38:11although my first year budget ended and I submitted all the required documents,
00:38:17my second year funding was cut. We need the funding to be able to continue our
00:38:24critical research. Here's another patient story. At age 17, a large black spot
00:38:32blocking his vision suddenly appeared in my patient's right eye. Over the next
00:38:39couple of months, multiple trips to increasingly specialized doctors led to
00:38:42a clinical diagnosis of von Hippelandu disease, the diagnosis received by phone
00:38:49on his 18th birthday. This is a genetic disease in which the damaged VHL tumor
00:38:55suppressor gene fails to stop tumors from growing. Patients experience
00:38:59randomly occurring tumors in up to 10 organs and the only available treatment
00:39:06was surgery to try to remove the tumors. The patient is one of about
00:39:1410% of patients who are de novo, the result of random genetic mutation. In
00:39:21this patient's case, scans had revealed not only a large tumor on the optic
00:39:26nerve of his right eye, but also a huge tumor encompassing
00:39:30one of his adrenal glands that, in retrospect, had been causing him
00:39:33headaches, inability to concentrate, and anxiety due to consistently elevated
00:39:38adrenal levels. While MRI scans also related tumors in his spine, kidney, and
00:39:43pancreas, this tumor, an entire adrenal gland, needed to be removed. After
00:39:50months of injections, his eye interspersed with laser treatment, he
00:39:54lost the vision in his right eye. The time needed for medical care required us to
00:40:00give him, for him to give up his team sport, losing both a support group and
00:40:05the chance to compete at the division one level, but he continued with his
00:40:07final exams, graduation, and plans to study engineering at the university. With
00:40:13continued regular monitoring, he was able to attend university, but the trauma of
00:40:16his diagnosis and the processing of the impact of what it might mean for his
00:40:20life, coupled with the stress of engineering studies, brought on
00:40:24significant mental health challenges. He did go on to graduate, traveling to the
00:40:28NIH for his regular surveillance, supported by various specialists. In
00:40:322022, a kidney tumor had grown large enough that he needed surgery again. The
00:40:40kidney is a sensitive organ and will normally have full nephroctomy of the
00:40:47affected kidney. Doctors were treating him, and now at age 24, his tumor was
00:40:55removed in a successful kidney sparing robotic operation. Yet tumors on his
00:41:01spine continue to grow. This experience for my patient and many others
00:41:07encapsulates the miracle of medical research funding. It has such a powerful
00:41:14impact on people's lives. We were able to get seriously miraculous things done, but
00:41:23without funding for these diseases, we may never have a chance to test
00:41:28the ideas and develop them in a way that led to a drug that ultimately helped
00:41:34this patient with these tumors. This is a success story, but will we have more? Will
00:41:42we have others? The drug we developed is expensive. Current
00:41:51recommendations are to take it daily. Nothing is known about its long-term
00:41:55side effects. More research is done. It's not known whether patients can take
00:41:58breaks from the drug. Stopping at some point might mean tumors would resume. One
00:42:03of the congressionally directed medical research program grants
00:42:06recommended for FY25 funding is going to look precisely at many of these
00:42:11questions. Two others will examine other aspects of critical treatment. These are
00:42:16life-or-death issues for the patients, and yet this funding now is threatened.
00:42:21Yet this research now is threatened. Please continue to fully fund the
00:42:27congressionally directed medical program. I'm going to read a few more and then
00:42:33pause, just in case my colleague wants to ask a question. But this is Kerry Muller
00:42:39from Texas. My family has benefited from congressionally directed medical
00:42:43research programs because my 13 year old daughters have neurofibromatosis, a
00:42:49rare genetic disease which causes uncontrolled tumor growth. My daughter
00:42:53Caitlin was diagnosed with a brain tumor two years ago, and thanks to a drug whose
00:42:56research was seeded with congressionally directed medical research program, her
00:43:00brain tumor has decreased to the point that is now undetectable on an MRI.
00:43:05Without this drug, she would have had to try other chemotherapy treatments that
00:43:10would have been more invasive. In addition to brain surgery, to bypass a
00:43:14blockage the tumor would have caused. This is Samantha Pearson from Las Vegas.
00:43:18For just over four years I've been on a clinical trial at UCLA. The meds
00:43:22were just recently FDA approved. While the side effects sometimes may be
00:43:26questioned, agreeing to the trial, being told my tumors have drastically shrunk
00:43:30made it all worthwhile. My pain is decreased. My plexiform neurofibroma is
00:43:3790% smaller and I am so happy that I get to be a part of this clinical trial made
00:43:43possibly by NFRP because of my participation in the drug trial. There is
00:43:49story after story here of people Camille Olinburg, Jan Dmowski, Lola Neudecker,
00:43:58Professor Alexander Rybaczewski, Kyle Retz, Carissa Heberkamp from Illinois,
00:44:07Samuel Curtin, Dr. Stephanie Bux-Hoveden,
00:44:13Katharina Hopp, Jared Tare, Dr. Terry Watnick, Scott Howe, Marine Corps, retired,
00:44:22Van Stort, United States Navy, Reed Novotny, Colonel, Maryland Air National
00:44:28Guard, Alex and Leslie, Chip and Kristen, Greg and Molly from Denver, William Tuttle,
00:44:37United States Navy. After my son's birth and diagnosis I was diagnosed with
00:44:43tuberculosis sclerosis complex at the age of 43 just three months after I
00:44:47retired from the 23 year naval career. The complexity of this disease means
00:44:51that it remains to be seen whether my young son will be able to live the
00:44:55typical life that I have been fortunate to live. Because of research conducted
00:45:00through the TSCRP my son has effective treatment options available to him that
00:45:05were not even just a decade ago but there's still so much to learn. Again
00:45:09another person benefiting from our research, benefiting from the funding
00:45:13that's now being threatened and cut. Beth Fineland from Nevada, Shelly Mitzner,
00:45:17Reed Hoffman, David Brooks Carpenter, a military family, Major David Long, United
00:45:22States Air Force, Debra Moritz, Fran Heiler. I just want to say that the
00:45:31Declaration of Independence clearly states we hold these truths to be
00:45:34self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their
00:45:38creator with certain unalienable rights that among these rights that among these
00:45:44are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How can you have life, liberty,
00:45:50and the pursuit of happiness without health? Health is at the core of life.
00:45:54Health is at the core of true liberty. Health is at the core of the pursuit of
00:46:01happiness. The right to health is fundamental for overall well-being and
00:46:08for the realization of other human rights. In his annual State of the Union
00:46:12address to Congress on January 6, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
00:46:18underscored the importance and shared commitment to four freedoms. Many of you
00:46:23know them. The first freedom is freedom of speech and expression. The second is
00:46:26the freedom of every person to worship their own way. The third is the freedom
00:46:30from want, which means every person deserves peace and health among other
00:46:37things, he said. The fourth freedom is a freedom of freedom from fear, which in
00:46:42our country of great wealth, no one should fear their health care going away.
00:46:49We have known from our country's beginnings and throughout that we must
00:46:54do all we can to provide for our people and we have tried to do that over the
00:46:57years from Social Security Act of 65, which created Medicaid and Medicare, the
00:47:02Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, HIPAA, to the
00:47:06Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, the ACA. We should be
00:47:12adding to these protections and benefits, trying to get more people health
00:47:15coverage. We should be caring for each other. We should be loving each other. We
00:47:21should be fighting for the justice of each other. We should be hearing the
00:47:25cries of parents worried for their children. We should be hearing the agony
00:47:29of a partner whose spouse has Alzheimer's. We should be standing up
00:47:34for these folks. This is why we fight. This is why I stand.
00:47:48Yes, I'll yield for a question while retaining the floor.
00:47:52Senator Booker, first of all, I want to express my gratitude to you for
00:47:58recognizing the gravity of this moment. Your ability to see that we are facing a
00:48:06series of threats that are not normal, a series of threats to families, to
00:48:12children, to individuals, threats to our democracy, threats to our rule of law. I
00:48:19think it's really important and you have endeavored to do something extraordinary
00:48:24here to stand on your feet for as long as you can to convey both to our
00:48:30colleagues and to the public that because these are not normal times, what
00:48:37is required of us is something different than a normal response. And I know maybe
00:48:45we have extended the amount of time that you had planned to talk on this
00:48:49particular topic of the threat to Americans' health care, but I don't know
00:48:55that there's anything more important than what we're talking about
00:48:58today in the United States Senate. Because the scope of what Republicans
00:49:03are talking about here is absolutely extraordinary. And I want to lay out for
00:49:08you a few additional facts and numbers and ask you to respond to them
00:49:14as you wrap up your time talking about this particular topic. But let me just
00:49:19underscore what you have laid out very well. We are talking about nearly nine
00:49:27hundred billion dollars worth of cuts to Medicaid in order to pay for about a
00:49:35trillion dollars worth of tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans. There
00:49:42will be table scraps in the Republican bill for middle-class consumers and
00:49:49families, but the bulk of the tax cuts are going to the very, very wealthy
00:49:54millionaires and billionaires. Frankly, people who have done tremendously well
00:49:59in this country over the past several decades who are not in need of more. And
00:50:04so you were very right to point out the immorality of the 2017 attempt to cut
00:50:11the Affordable Care Act, which ensured 20 million Americans. But Medicaid covers
00:50:2070 to 80 million Americans. And the new wrinkle is that this proposal doesn't
00:50:28just cut health care for tens of millions of Americans. Estimates are that
00:50:33it could be 30 million Americans that lose health care under the Republican
00:50:37proposal. No, this is even more difficult to swallow for the American public than
00:50:43the 2017 attempt to cut and eliminate the Affordable Care Act, because this
00:50:49measure is a direct transfer of money from the poor and the middle class, the
00:50:53people who are on Medicaid, to the very, very wealthy. Frankly, it could turn out
00:50:58to be the biggest transfer of wealth in the history of the country from the poor
00:51:03and the middle class to the wealthy. Which is why I think you are taking this
00:51:10extraordinary step to make sure that our colleagues and the American people know
00:51:15the gravity of this moment. A lot of Republicans all across the country are
00:51:19not doing town halls any longer. They are not meeting in person with their
00:51:23constituents. And so there's a lot of Americans that are going to be in the
00:51:27dark, that have a lot of questions, have a lot of questions about what's
00:51:32happening here, about why it is necessary to cut a program like Medicaid
00:51:38that insures 24% of Americans to the bone in order to finance a tax cut for
00:51:43the very, very wealthy. One of the things I just wanted to set up for you here is,
00:51:49you know, just to note that Americans may be surprised to know that 24% of
00:51:55Americans are actually on Medicaid today, because some Americans may say, well my
00:52:02insurance isn't Medicaid. My insurance is through Mississippi Can, or my
00:52:08insurance is through Access Nebraska, or my insurance is through Centennial Care,
00:52:13or in Connecticut my insurance is through Husky Health. In New Jersey, it's New
00:52:20Jersey Family Care, right? So Medicaid normally isn't called Medicaid. It's
00:52:24called something different in every state. And so it's important for you to
00:52:31understand that so many of your neighbors are on Medicaid, even though it
00:52:37may not be called Medicaid in your state. That's how we get to 24%
00:52:42of American families on this particular program. And the Joint Economic Committee,
00:52:48which is a committee of Congress, did a study, issued a report talking about how
00:52:54many people would lose their health care insurance on a state-by-state basis if
00:52:59this 880 billion dollar cut to Medicaid went through. And I won't go through the
00:53:04whole list, Senator Booker, but I just pulled out some states that are
00:53:08represented by our Republican colleagues. In Alabama, 20% of Alabamans are on their
00:53:15Medicaid program. And in total, 330,000 people in one state, Alabama, would lose
00:53:21their health care if this cut went through. In Arkansas, 25% of families are
00:53:28on the Arkansas Medicaid program. A quarter million people would lose their
00:53:34health insurance. In Florida, 17% of the state is on Medicaid. 1.3 million
00:53:40Floridians could lose their health care because of these Medicaid cuts. We can
00:53:47just go on and on. 20% of Iowans are on the Medicaid program. 20% of
00:53:53Indiana residents. 25% of Kentucky residents. 30% of Louisianans are on
00:54:01their state's Medicaid program. 500,000 residents of Louisiana could lose their
00:54:09health care. Some of that would happen in a sort of slow-moving catastrophe, but as
00:54:15you pointed out, Senator Booker, a lot of that would happen immediately because
00:54:19many of the states that have taken advantage of the Affordable Care Act
00:54:23Medicaid expansion have a built-in clause to their state's law that says
00:54:28the minute the reimbursement rate declines, even if it declines by only a
00:54:33few percentage points, the entirety of the Medicaid expansion program is
00:54:38eliminated. So overnight, you will have millions of people who will lose their
00:54:43health care insurance. But as you have rightly pointed out, that's just
00:54:46the beginning of the disaster. Because there are hundreds of rural hospitals in
00:54:51this country that are right now living on the brink of disaster. If Medicaid
00:54:57reimbursements drop just by five or ten percent, those rural hospitals are out of
00:55:02business. Same can be said of thousands of drug treatment centers in this
00:55:08country, addiction treatment centers. And so you're ultimately talking about
00:55:12hundreds, if not thousands, of hospitals and health centers closing. Millions of
00:55:17Americans losing their health care insurance. And for what? And for what? To
00:55:24be able to hoard a bunch of money so that the richest Americans can buy a
00:55:29third vacation home? So that millionaires can double their landscaping budget? Who's
00:55:39asking for this in America today? Of course there's a conversation to be had
00:55:44about efficiency in our health care programs. But none of that conversation
00:55:50is happening here. If it was, you wouldn't be reading the letters of all
00:55:54of these associations representing health care groups predicting disaster.
00:56:00They would actually be in the room at the table. Because if you really wanted
00:56:04to save money, you'd actually put the doctors in the hospitals and the medical
00:56:08providers who know something about the system in a room. But instead, this is a
00:56:11political decision that's been made to cut a certain amount of money that does
00:56:16not coincidentally line up to the amount of money that the Republican budget bill
00:56:21wants to give in tax cuts to the very, very wealthy. And so you, I think, rightly
00:56:31put emphasis and drew attention to John McCain's decision, and of course we
00:56:37should always give credit to Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, who also
00:56:41voted no in 2017 on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act bill, because it's
00:56:46just a reminder that you are under no obligation as a United States senator to
00:56:52do the wrong thing if you know what the right thing is. You work so hard to get
00:56:57this job, spend your entire life working to become somebody who can make
00:57:03important decisions like we can in the United States Senate, and you are under
00:57:08no obligation to outsource your decision-making to the President of the
00:57:14United States or your party leadership. Everybody here gets to make an
00:57:17independent decision on what's right or wrong. And this just feels plain wrong.
00:57:23A thoughtless, unplanned, massive cut in Medicaid that's going to throw millions
00:57:30of people off their health care in order to finance a tax cut, the majority of
00:57:34which is going to go to people who don't need it. Every senator here can make up
00:57:41their own mind as to whether that is the right thing or the wrong thing to do for
00:57:46this country. And the exercise that you are engaged in, Senator Booker, is a
00:57:51simple one, just trying to make sure that all the facts are on the table. That last
00:57:56segment you did on the impact on medical research should be reason alone for
00:58:03folks to reconsider the path this administration is taking. But the
00:58:10Medicaid cuts as a mechanism to further enrich those that are already plenty
00:58:17rich, man, I just don't imagine that is anything that the American public are
00:58:22clamoring for. And so, Senator Booker, I just wanted to really thank you for
00:58:28standing up and making this moment possible. And I want to leave you with
00:58:35just two stories on this topic that have come into my office and then ask you a
00:58:40question. This is all a lead-up to a question. So I have a constituent who was
00:58:49paralyzed about a decade ago, and he now exists in a wheelchair. And the only
00:58:54insurance program that can provide him with what he needs from a
00:59:01mechanical and technological standpoint, plus the drugs he needs to survive, is
00:59:06Medicaid. It's his only option. It's his only option. He can't work. He's paralyzed.
00:59:10Medicaid is his only option. And for him, and for millions of others, Medicaid is
00:59:16life or death. It's just life or death. If you're talking about cutting Medicaid
00:59:22by as much as 20 percent, that's what we're talking about here today, an 880
00:59:26billion dollar cut to Medicaid represents about 10 percent of the
00:59:31overall program. But you have to assume that states are not going to continue to
00:59:36match if the federal government isn't putting in their share. So that 10 percent
00:59:42cut could very quickly become something closer to a 20 percent cut. There is no
00:59:47way that you can cut the Medicaid program by 20 percent without it
00:59:50impacting people like my constituent in a wheelchair who comes to many of my
00:59:55events when we protest these Medicaid cuts. This is life or death for many
00:59:59Americans. But that's not the full extent of the horror that will happen. I was
01:00:10just reading a letter the other day from an 80-year-old constituent of mine who
01:00:16lives at home with his wife, but his wife is very frail, and it is Medicaid and
01:00:24Connecticut's Medicaid waiver that allows for her to receive in-home health care
01:00:29services. And he is panicked. He wants to spend the final years of his life with
01:00:37his wife. And he knows that if Medicaid gets cut, even on the margins, that
01:00:43Medicaid waiver likely is gone. And either his wife will pass, or she will
01:00:51have to be in an institution. Query whether that institution will be able to
01:00:56even give her a place, because two-thirds of nursing home beds in this country are
01:01:01paid for by Medicaid. And so one way or the other, he is staring separation from
01:01:08his wife in the eye. She either doesn't make it without the Medicaid
01:01:15reimbursement that gives her the services at home, or she is forced to go
01:01:19to an institution and they live separately for their final days.
01:01:25This is the reality facing people who rely on Medicaid, whether you are
01:01:29disabled or elderly. This is the reality that will be imposed on millions of
01:01:35Americans in order to finance a tax cut for the wealthy. The scope of this is
01:01:43just enormous, Senator Booker. And so I guess this is the question I wanted to
01:01:48ask you. You and I have been in government for a long time. We've served
01:01:53in a variety of different capacities. I don't think this country is really ready
01:02:00for the scope of the health care cataclysm that could come with a
01:02:05trillion-dollar cut to the health insurance program that is responsible
01:02:10for the care of one-quarter of Americans, two-thirds of nursing home beds, and the
01:02:17budgets of literally tens of thousands of vital health care institutions in
01:02:23this country. And so nobody is better than you at conveying the moral
01:02:31consequences of the decisions we make here. Just share with us for a minute, as
01:02:38you sort of wrap up a conversation on this topic of the health care priorities
01:02:45of the Trump administration and the Republican Congress, what America may
01:02:49look like in a world where we have decided to gut the program, the health
01:02:56insurance program of last resort for the most vulnerable Americans, and the health
01:03:00insurance program that ensures 24 percent of Americans, two-thirds of which
01:03:04are working for a living. Just give us a little bit of a sense of the enormity of
01:03:11the consequence that this ultimately would bring to this country. So first of
01:03:16all, thank you for the question, but I just want to reiterate the friendship I
01:03:21have with Chris Murphy and his willingness to spend the night with me
01:03:25here on the floor as we go hour after hour after hour. And I just want to say
01:03:31this again, and I'm going to say it a few times in this long speech that will go
01:03:35on for as long as I'm physically able. Chris, the last time we spent 15 hours on
01:03:42this floor together was a health issue. It was yet another stunning mass
01:03:49shooting, this time at the Pulse nightclub, and you and I talked a lot
01:03:54before we got on this floor. And I think the agony that you and I were
01:03:59feeling was, how can this be the strongest nation on the world who
01:04:04organized government? If you read our founding documents, if you read our
01:04:08founding fathers, one of the first things they organized this government
01:04:12for, you know, it's good to carry around the Constitution. You know, it is
01:04:19so important to understand what the preamble to the Constitution says we
01:04:25are about. We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect
01:04:32union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the
01:04:40common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of
01:04:44liberty to ourselves and our prosperity, do ordain and establish the Constitution
01:04:52United States, which each one of us, each one of us in this body, went down there
01:04:56and swore an oath to uphold. Those are the first words of this, Chris, and God,
01:05:03I remember your agony. Folks, I want you to know, when I came to this body,
01:05:11my staff was talking about the maiden speech, the maiden speech.
01:05:14Please don't go back and look at my maiden speech. It was not great.
01:05:18But the maiden speech my staff wanted me to watch was yours, and it was gut-wrenching
01:05:24about Newtown, gut-wrenching that the strongest nation on the planet Earth
01:05:33should now be this nation where we tell our children in this implicit lesson,
01:05:40not explicit, but implicit lesson, we are going to teach you how to hide.
01:05:46We're going to run actor-shooter drills because we can't protect you.
01:05:52And my mom lives in Vegas, and that Vegas shooting, shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
01:06:01And so here we were in yet another of these maddening realities in our country
01:06:05that the leading cause of death for our children is shooting.
01:06:07And in our conversations leading up to it, I still remember you and I saying,
01:06:12we need to come to this floor, and you said, I'm going to stand and do something different.
01:06:18And we, again, just like tonight, we had no end to that.
01:06:23We were just, we were nine years younger, my friend.
01:06:29And we said we were going to stand down here and try to get this body to do something different,
01:06:35to try to get this body to recognize the gravity of what was going on in the strongest nation on the Earth
01:06:41that was having child after child after child, American after American, dying to gun violence.
01:06:46And the response we were getting from this body, the world's most deliberative body,
01:06:51was nothing's going to change.
01:06:53We can't do anything.
01:06:55I mean, I'm going to give you respect.
01:06:57Years later, you were part of the first gun legislation to pass out of this body in 30-something years.
01:07:04And now, I just found out that the community violence intervention money
01:07:10that you allowed me to fight so hard to get into that bill is being clawed back by Donald Trump.
01:07:18Our bipartisan bill, our bipartisan approved finances, money,
01:07:24and I think are taking away of our power in this body from the bill that you were one of the main architects of
01:07:32with Republican colleagues, God bless them, people like Cornyn and others.
01:07:37And so, I just want to take people back to what the insider conversations, and you were generous.
01:07:42I want to remind you, just teasingly on the floor, you never asked me if you could publish my text messages,
01:07:46but you put them in your book.
01:07:48It's a great book.
01:07:49I actually learned, I read lots of my colleagues' book.
01:07:52I learned a lot of data about gun violence from your book.
01:07:57And we were talking about this belief that these words, this belief in our country,
01:08:04that these words, why this government was formed, is so important.
01:08:09I just, America, this is who we are, these imperfect geniuses.
01:08:15We formed this, we the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
01:08:21ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare,
01:08:26and secure the blessings of liberty.
01:08:29And so, you stood right down there for 15 hours.
01:08:33I paced this room, pledging to you that I wouldn't go to the bathroom, I wouldn't sit down,
01:08:38and I was hurting after 15 hours.
01:08:41But you were steadfast until we finally got Mitch McConnell to give us something.
01:08:48It was one or two votes, you can just, it was two votes.
01:08:51And both of them failed, we didn't get 60.
01:08:52But at least what we forced this institution to do, to confront the horrendous horrors
01:09:01of that nightclub shooting.
01:09:04And so you ask me now, as you and I, and my dear brother who I've known since he was coming out of college,
01:09:14three of us on this floor at a new day, it's past midnight, a new month, it's past midnight,
01:09:20as we sit here, why?
01:09:23Because of your question.
01:09:26I can't stand anymore to live in a country where it seems that the convulsions come
01:09:33that threaten our most vulnerable over and over again.
01:09:37I can't stand it.
01:09:38I have to stand up.
01:09:39I have to speak up.
01:09:40We have to do something different yet again.
01:09:42You and I talked about this last week.
01:09:49America, we are not doing a good job right now.
01:09:55We read the section about medical debt.
01:09:58Tens of millions of Americans are saddled with medical debt.
01:10:01Sixty-six percent of the people that declare bankruptcy is because they can't afford their medical bills,
01:10:05because something that happened to them could happen to us and our families.
01:10:14My mother, my brother and I have a lot of challenges, a lot of problems,
01:10:17but we weren't saddled with a rare disease.
01:10:23We didn't have tumors springing up all over our bodies.
01:10:25I don't know what that would have done to my family.
01:10:29Yes.
01:10:33There is so much similarity between the debate that you are forcing this Senate to have tonight
01:10:40and the debate that we were having back in 2016 on this epidemic of gun violence.
01:10:47I always describe it this way.
01:10:50The only thing that matters, the thing that matters more than anything else in your life,
01:10:54is protecting your loved ones from physical harm.
01:10:58You would give anything, anything.
01:11:02You would give your life-saving, your house.
01:11:05You would perhaps give your own life in order to protect your child or your brother or sister
01:11:11or mother or father from physical harm.
01:11:14When you and I have sat across from the victims of gun violence,
01:11:20many of which live in your neighborhood and my neighborhood in Newark and Hartford,
01:11:25we are looking at a kind of desperation and sorrow that is unique,
01:11:31that is unique that comes with not just losing a loved one to gun violence,
01:11:36but feeling powerless in that exercise, feeling like there was nothing you could do,
01:11:43and watching your elected leaders stand by and allow for this reality to continue to occur
01:11:49in your neighborhood where kids are being shot down in cold blood and your elected leaders,
01:11:56the adults in charge of your community, are standing idly by.
01:11:59That is not fundamentally different than the reality that will be visited upon millions
01:12:03of families if this size of a cut in Medicaid funding goes into effect.
01:12:08Because families out there who rely on Medicaid to keep alive their son or daughter
01:12:13who has a complicated medical disease have no other quarter,
01:12:18have no other last resort besides Medicaid.
01:12:21And so Medicaid stands between life and death for their son or daughter.
01:12:29There is no other place for them to go.
01:12:31And so that same empty, hollow look that we have seen so many times in the eyes of a mother
01:12:39or father who lost a son or daughter to gun violence,
01:12:43that is the look that we are choosing to visit upon millions of families in this country
01:12:51who when faced with the loss of their only health insurance option for their disabled child
01:13:00will watch their child potentially face the same fate as those young men in your neighborhood
01:13:06and my neighborhood.
01:13:08And so that's the reason why I pose this question to you that you're answering
01:13:12about the moral gravity of this moment because it is not fundamentally different
01:13:17than the one that brought us here in 2016.
01:13:20And answering this question, and again I'm going to continue to yield the question to you
01:13:24while retaining the floor, I want to just compound this for people because I know these numbers,
01:13:32880 billion, 100 million Americans affected by, that would be affected directly by Medicaid cuts
01:13:39or the people that work in the hospitals that would be affected by Medicaid cuts
01:13:42or the nursing homes that are affected by Medicaid cuts.
01:13:44These are big, big numbers, but people, these are human beings.
01:13:48I live in a community that had a horrible lead poisoning problem for their kids,
01:13:53that had horrible toxic sites and children born around toxic Superfund sites,
01:13:59as you know they're called, have higher rates of autism, higher rates of birth defects.
01:14:06And so even coming up as a city council person,
01:14:09I saw that the environmental injustices surrounding my community were causing parents
01:14:15to have to deal with medical complications amongst their children at alarming rates
01:14:19and needed help and Medicaid was the program.
01:14:22No fault of their own, environmental injustice.
01:14:25Now here's the double insult of the Trump administration.
01:14:29One is they gutted the environmental justice section at the DOJ.
01:14:35They're not investigating corporate polluters.
01:14:39They're not investigating the injustices environmentally that big powerful wealthy people do
01:14:46that often cause people, we all saw Erin Brockovich,
01:14:49that cause people to get seriously hurt.
01:14:52And then the second part of that insult is we're not only not going to hold people accountable
01:14:58and let them get away with that, the polluters or the folks causing often the source of the disease,
01:15:03we're now not going to help get healthcare to the families who often live
01:15:07in fragile communities that have these resources.
01:15:10These are the people, when you sit with them in your office as you and I have,
01:15:14as me and the other senator from New Jersey on the floor tonight have, as you sit with them
01:15:21and they tell you their stories and you see that this is a lifeline,
01:15:27that this Medicaid program, and you are so good by telling people,
01:15:32because I saw this during the Affordable Care Act, just the name alone.
01:15:36People are like, I don't have Obamacare.
01:15:40Yes, you have the ACA, and let me explain it to you.
01:15:43It's under many different names, including in my state, that people don't know
01:15:47that this is a Medicaid-funded program.
01:15:50So they don't know that this is a sort of Damocles at their family's well-being.
01:15:55But this is the larger issue, Senator Murphy, is that these are real people in every county,
01:16:02in every state, it's why they're representatives,
01:16:05it's why I read statements demanding there not to be cuts by the organizations,
01:16:11bipartisanly read, the League of Cities, the largest mayor association, Republican governors
01:16:19and others are all saying, do not cut this program.
01:16:22They're not even saying, don't do $880 million, maybe just do $400 million.
01:16:26They're saying, do not cut this program.
01:16:28And many of them are saying, in fact, we need to find ways to expand the program
01:16:31because there's still gaps that people are falling into.
01:16:35And it doesn't make economic sense because if you get regular care,
01:16:40if your chronic disease is treated, it ultimately could be cheaper to the taxpayer
01:16:45as opposed to people ending up in hospitals.
01:16:47But those hospitals now, because of what's being threatened in this bill,
01:16:53rural hospitals and Tier 1 trauma hospitals are all being threatened in their care.
01:17:00And so tonight, it's not normal.
01:17:05I ask everybody to understand, this is not a normal moment in America.
01:17:09This is a crossroads moment in America.
01:17:13It's one of those times where the values that we talk about in the Constitution are at stake.
01:17:19What is going to define us?
01:17:23Our commitments to ideals of justice, fairness, of being there for each other.
01:17:32And one of those other programs that is now in crisis is what I want to switch to.
01:17:41And I think my colleague was joking with me because we have, for anybody who's watching,
01:17:47we have a whole list of things we wanted to get to.
01:17:52And my staff, now seemingly very ambitiously, Medicaid, Medicare, health care,
01:18:01Social Security is coming up now, tariffs and economic policy, education, national security,
01:18:06public safety, immigration, housing, chapter by chapter, each one about an hour or so.
01:18:12This would be enough to make it till tomorrow evening if I can stand that long.
01:18:15And who knows?
01:18:19But we're behind schedule, so I'm going to jump into talk about Social Security.
01:18:25And I want to start because, as I said earlier, I get to stand here.
01:18:29I get to come on this floor, but so many millions of people don't.
01:18:34And I want to elevate their voices tonight because as I go across New Jersey,
01:18:38as I go across my nation, I see Republicans, Democrats, independents, veterans,
01:18:43so many people stopping me in airports, stopping me in the community,
01:18:46stopping me in the grocery store, wanting to tell me that they're afraid,
01:18:49that they're angry, that they're worried, that they believe we are in crisis,
01:18:54that our nation is at a crossroads.
01:18:56Who are we going to be as a nation?
01:18:59And this topic, I don't know if...
01:19:07Maybe I will just let you all know that this topic,
01:19:11my mom chewed into me about this topic.
01:19:14She lives in a senior citizen retirement community, mostly Republican.
01:19:19I visited her many times.
01:19:21It's a great community.
01:19:22I hate how we go to this idea of right or left.
01:19:26These are great seniors that live in a great community,
01:19:29and they're talking about Social Security.
01:19:31So I want to read, start before this section by just reading.
01:19:36This is how people are sending it to me.
01:19:38This is a small postcard, handwritten, from somebody from Hamilton Square, New Jersey.
01:19:46Dear Senator Booker, I'm writing to ask you if my Social Security is now in danger.
01:19:51Please let me know.
01:19:53It is very important to me.
01:19:57I'm going to try to answer that tonight fairly and candidly.
01:20:02Here's another person who writes, my staff is protecting their identity.
01:20:07I just want to say where they're from, South Plains, New Jersey.
01:20:12I am one of your constituents in a proud New Jersey,
01:20:15and I'm writing to let you know how upset, distraught,
01:20:18and worried I am about the current state of our country.
01:20:20I hope you will take time and read my letter,
01:20:23as this is the first time I have felt compelled to write a government official.
01:20:27I want to tell you, I'm reading your letter again,
01:20:29and I'm now reading it on national TV, if C-SPAN could be...
01:20:35The presiding officer might challenge me with a factual error,
01:20:37but C-SPAN is national TV, I think.
01:20:41I want to start by telling you a little about myself.
01:20:42I am 64 years old, and I am currently working full-time.
01:20:47I am a breast cancer survivor.
01:20:49My plan was to retire in the next three years,
01:20:52but with the current state of chaos and turmoil,
01:20:56I honestly don't see how I can retire.
01:20:58I'm concerned about Medicare, which I will definitely need when I retire.
01:21:02I will also need a supplemental plan for whatever Medicare does not cover.
01:21:07I do not qualify for retirement benefits through my job.
01:21:11With the cuts being made to federal programs,
01:21:13Medicare will not be enough.
01:21:16I would need a more expensive supplemental plan to cover these cuts.
01:21:20I am also concerned about Social Security.
01:21:25I have worked since I was 16,
01:21:30except for nine years when I was home with my three children.
01:21:35I have worked hard and paid into Social Security
01:21:38and believed that the money was for my retirement.
01:21:41Now I hear that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme,
01:21:48and it may be privatized.
01:21:52This is so unfair for people like me that worked hard all their life
01:21:56and counted on this money to retire.
01:21:58I was planning on working past 65 to get my full Social Security benefits,
01:22:02but now I begin to wonder if it's worth it.
01:22:09Now I begin to wonder if it's worth it.
01:22:17So at this point, I am in a holding pattern
01:22:22due to the unstable climate in which we are all living.
01:22:26As I said, I have three children who are all adults now.
01:22:30My son has been diagnosed as being bipolar.
01:22:37He's been hospitalized a few times due to this.
01:22:41He is currently on medication that he needs to function
01:22:44and sees a therapist.
01:22:45He is in grad school and is on Medicaid.
01:22:51He works part-time since he is a full-time grad student,
01:22:54so he does not qualify for benefits.
01:22:56I worry about what these cuts will do to my son and others like him.
01:23:01No one seems concerned with the people who rely on these programs
01:23:06to live their best life.
01:23:08Someone needs to look out and take an interest
01:23:10in helping people in these circumstances.
01:23:13My daughter is a teacher in a district that receives Title I funds.
01:23:19She works very hard as a teacher and is devoted to her students.
01:23:22With the supposed dismantling of the Department of Education,
01:23:25I'm concerned about what this means to the education field,
01:23:28teachers, administration, and students.
01:23:30My daughter's school is making a difference in the lives of these students,
01:23:34and they need the funding that is received
01:23:36from both the state and federal government.
01:23:38Programs like the Title I and other federally-funded programs
01:23:42need to stay in place.
01:23:45On another...