'Going To Cost A Lot Of Money': Jack Reed Torches Republican Budget Resolution

yesterday

In remarks on the Senate floor Thursday, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) spoke about the Republican budget resolution.

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Transcript

00:00Senator from Rhode Island. Thank you Mr. President. Well we're back here again with

00:05another variation on the Trump plan and the Republican plan to do further damage

00:14to our economy and to the working men and women of this country. It's been

00:23sliced and diced and repackaged and unpackaged but it still boils down to a

00:29very simple equation. Big tax cuts for the very very wealthy and cuts to

00:39Medicaid and other key programs that are essential to Americans. This resolution

00:46is going to cost a lot of money, about 5.8 trillion dollars with a T. Now today

00:56President Trump unveiled or yesterday I should say unveiled his tariff policies

01:01and today the markets reacted. They lost 2.5 trillion dollars in value. So he is

01:10just taking a sledgehammer to our economy and a sledgehammer to the

01:17working families who depend upon these programs like Medicaid and a sledgehammer

01:22to our universities and medical schools and research laboratories which have

01:30made us the premier center for research innovation and health care in the world.

01:37And with these sledgehammer blows I don't think we can maintain that status.

01:46These proposals by the President and my Republican colleagues are designed to

01:53take away the health care coverage from millions of Americans, seniors, kids,

01:58veterans, individuals with disabilities and they particularly seem to focus on

02:05Medicaid. Now Medicaid provides essential health care services for the most

02:12vulnerable population of the country. It covers nearly 80 million people if you

02:18combine those covered by the Children's Health Insurance Plan, CHIP. In my home

02:24state of Rhode Island over 300,000 people and that's about one-third of my

02:30state depend on Medicaid and the Republicans are talking about cutting

02:38this program by 880 billion dollars which would be devastating. And looking

02:46at the Medicaid recipients in Rhode Island it's interesting. One in five

02:54adults age 19 to 64 are covered. One in three children are covered and we all

03:02know how critical it is for health care for children because a childhood

03:08problem left untreated can lead often to much more serious health consequences

03:15as they grow older, much more dependency on social programs which are paid for by

03:22us. Good health care as a child guarantees in many many and most cases

03:30success in school, success in life, and a healthy life. One in three children. Now

03:36five in eight people residing in nursing homes are receiving Medicaid. So let me

03:45tell you what's going to happen when Medicaid is cut by this extraordinary

03:49amount of money, 880 billion dollars. A lot of nursing homes will close because

03:58their margin, their, their, the difference between opening the doors and closing

04:03them is the Medicaid money that we see. When that goes, where are you going to put

04:09your ailing mother or grandmother? I'll tell you what to do. You're gonna do it

04:15like they did it before Medicaid. When I was a young kid it was not unusual to go

04:20visit someone and in the front room there'd be the hospital bed and the

04:24grandmother and the mother was taking care of the person and that was health

04:29care back then. But after Medicaid we were able to create a much more

04:35effective health care system and this will touch not just the very poor, this

04:42touches the working families. It's the only way they can keep really their

04:48mother or father or older relative or a child with a very serious illness in a

04:56safe, protective place where they can receive appropriate care. Now three in

05:04seven Medicaid recipients in Rhode Island are working-age adults with

05:11disability. Now this is a situation where these people, because of their physical

05:17limitations, cannot work, need assistance. Some are severely disabled, others are

05:24significantly disabled, and they're going to be left literally out in the

05:30cold. And I must say there's a corollary here because just a few days ago the

05:39president announced that he was going to take the IDEA education program and move

05:45it into the Department of Health, which at the same time is trying to shed

05:50thousands and thousands of workers. So my fear, of course, is that again going

05:57back into the my youth, the 50s and the 60s, that children with disabilities will

06:04be sitting in the back of the room by themselves trying to keep themselves

06:11occupied because what we have created through IDEA, a system of education

06:18tailored to the individual child's disability, will be unsupportable. And

06:24that's the kind of damage he's doing, and it's the working people, it's the

06:29families, it's the kids, and it's, I think, inexcusable. Throughout the country, 38

06:37million children rely on Medicaid. 2.3 million children with disabilities, as I

06:44said, throughout the country rely on Medicaid. And also, as I said, throughout

06:53the country, not just Rhode Island, 7 million seniors count on Medicaid to

06:59afford nursing home care. So we're in a situation now where we are basically

07:07undercutting our health care system, and it's not just these people who feel it,

07:12everyone will feel it. If these Medicaid cuts go through, it will create so much

07:20turmoil in my state that our health care delivery system will be under great

07:29pressure, but I think so much pressure that it will not work. Where do people go

07:35when they don't have health care? They go to the emergency room. So if you or me

07:42or somebody who's, we might even have health care insurance, and then we have a

07:47serious problem, well, we can go to the emergency room and just get

07:53in the back of the line that's going all the way around the block and through the

07:56parking lot and every place else, because these hundreds of thousands of people

08:02without health care, that's where they'll have to go when they're so painful, they

08:07can't go to work. This is a disaster in the making. And again, we saw last week

08:21and weeks before, President Trump talking about, I'm gonna put tariffs in and we're

08:26gonna fix the whole economy. Nonsense. It's a disaster. It's killing our markets.

08:33And once again, oh, I'm gonna go in there and take out Medicaid, etc., etc. It'll be a

08:40disaster, and I think we must avoid it. We are better off because of Medicaid.

08:48Better health care outcomes in this country. A different country, literally,

08:52than it was prior to the introduction of Medicaid, and a better country. It provides

08:59health care coverage for, for example, 17 million women of reproductive age, so they

09:05can have the health care they need. And it helps families grow and prosper. And

09:12by making seniors and people with disabilities get the care they need, we

09:19are, I think, living up to the aspirations of this country, which is to

09:26ensure that those who need care get care. You know, there's been a lot of men and

09:35women who served in the Armed Forces of the United States, and I was proud to do

09:38it myself, and they weren't risking their lives so that a very wealthy individual

09:47could have five Mercedes rather than four. They were risking it so kids could

09:52have health care who needed it, who their mother and father could have a place to

09:56be when they were sick and ill in their older years. And what we're doing? We're

10:07forgetting that sacrifice, and we're saying, no, we're just here to pay off the

10:11rich people, the rich people who paid off so much through the president's

10:17campaign to get him elected. Now, one thing I want to emphasize, which is very

10:23important and often overlooked, going back to Rhode Island, 74% of adults in

10:31Rhode Island and Medicaid are working. There is this insidious notion that this

10:39is just a free giveaway to people who don't work, who don't deserve it, etc.

10:45That's why we can get rid of it. Seventy-four percent of the people on

10:50Medicaid are working, and they're working very hard. Oh, and by the way, my guess is

10:55they're not going to get a big benefit from these tax cuts because their minimum

11:00wage or a little bit more. So we are really doing something that is so

11:08unjust, and I believe un-American, of rewarding the wealthy, some of whom have

11:15worked hard to get it, some of whom just were lucky enough to be born to the

11:20right parents, and we're giving them a fortune, and we're taking away basic

11:28health care from working men and women. So we are in a very, very difficult

11:36situation. I don't think we can touch Medicaid, and for the moral reasons I

11:44tried to suggest, and for the economic reasons, if those 74% of Medicaid adults

11:51who are working can't get to work because they're ill, how do we get the

11:55jobs done? We don't. And the impact on the nation in terms of these cuts are

12:09going to be horrendous, and this impact is going to be every place in the

12:15country. I talked a lot about Rhode Island, but one of the ideas the

12:20Republicans are advancing to cut Medicaid is to eliminate the Medicaid

12:25expansion provided for under the Affordable Care Act. Now according to the

12:31Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this cut would cost

12:3741 states over 44 billion dollars. States would have to increase their share of

12:44Medicaid spending by 25%. States like North Dakota, Indiana, Montana, and

12:52Nebraska would see their costs go up by 30%. So I hope my colleagues from these

12:58states are ready, willing, and able to go out and tell their constituents, your

13:05health care costs are going up 30%. Now obviously I oppose this resolution that

13:11is being proposed. We have to do more, not less. And it's not just about the

13:18moral commitment I feel we have to people who need health care coverage.

13:23It's about the economics of caring for people early before it becomes more

13:31expensive, providing facilities for people who need those facilities rather

13:37than let them languish at home. And Mr. President, with that I would yield the

13:44floor.

'Going To Cost A Lot Of Money': Jack Reed Torches Republican Budget Resolution

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