Government Funding (Executive Calendar)
Mr. President, we are into the second day of a government shutdown after Democrats, once again, rejected a clean, nonpartisan funding bill to keep the government open while we continue bipartisan appropriations work. We are not going to be voting today, as we have Jewish colleagues who are currently observing Yom Kippur, but we will be voting tomorrow. And we are going to give my Democratic colleagues another opportunity to reopen the government by passing the clean, nonpartisan funding extension before us.
I realize that my Democrat colleagues are facing pressure from Members of their far-left base, but they are playing a losing game here. A robust majority of American voters are against a government shutdown. Even some Democrat Members are raising concerns, with a Democrat House Member noting yesterday:
That, from a Democrat House Member.
Organizations ranging from the National Fraternal Order of Police to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Teamsters have spoken out against shutting down the government. The Teamsters president said Tuesday:
That, again, from the president of the Teamsters. ``Clean'' is what he said.
My Democrat colleagues have little to work with in this debate, with their own previous statements working against them, and so they have tried to portray the clean, nonpartisan funding bill before us as something other than what it is.
But the Teamsters president reminds us of the facts. We are not asking Democrats to swallow a list of new Republican policies or partisan demands--not in there. We are asking Democrats to do nothing more than pass a clean, nonpartisan bill to fund the government for a few more weeks so that we can get back to bipartisan appropriations work.
And I said ``bipartisan appropriations work''--the kind of bipartisan work that has seen the Senate pass three appropriations bills so far by robust bipartisan margins, the kind of work that we want to continue once Democrats have stopped holding government funding hostage to a long list of partisan demands.
So far, three of our Democrat colleagues have joined Republicans to attempt to reopen the government. If we can just find a few more Democrats to join us, we can end this shutdown and get back to bipartisan appropriations work and the business of the American people.
Democrats voted for clean CRs like the one before us 13 times--13 times--during the Biden administration. I hope they will join us to pass this clean CR and reopen the government for hard-working Americans.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Kansas.
Mr. President, here we are, day No. 2 of the Schumer shutdown, or should we call this the AOC shutdown? After all, when the puppet master gets outmaneuvered by his own radical Squad, who is really calling the shots? Shouldn't we give the Squad some credit here for this shutdown?
Now, let me say that a different way. This Democrat shutdown is nothing but a cynical political shutdown, with Senator Schumer kowtowing to his radical, leftwing extremists. He is desperately recoiling, fighting to stave off a primary and to save his party from the piranhas in their own midst. Look, I am sure he feels like he has been steamrolled by President Trump and the overwhelming ``America First'' mandate that 78 million American patriots who voted for real change.
Everything else--all other excuses--is just a pathetic smokescreen to hide their failures. But let's take a closer look at some of these Democrat excuses. Again, they are decoys; they are camouflage and why this is indeed a Schumer shutdown.
First of all, there is no substance to their arguments. They want to talk about healthcare. Boy, do Republicans want to fix healthcare, but the real problem is the cost of healthcare. Healthcare has gone up 400 percent in the last couple of decades. It is the cost of healthcare. All my Democratic friends want to do is just keep throwing more and more money, more and more subsidies, making big healthcare systems rich.
Premiums are going to go up 20 percent this year--20 percent. Again, healthcare is what is leading inflation. If it wasn't for healthcare inflation, we would probably be down closer to 2 percent. So regardless of what happens here in Congress in the next 3 to 4 months, your healthcare premium is going to go up 20 percent on average.
This shutdown is keeping us from working on the real problem, and that is the cost of healthcare. Think about Republican solutions that we have out there right now.
We have legislation that we call the Price Tags bill that we hope to debate, work up, and mark up in our healthcare committee this fall. What that bill does is it forces every hospital, surgery center, imaging center to put a pricetag on the procedures you are going to have done.
Can you imagine walking into a restaurant and not knowing the price of a good Kansas steak versus some cheap-grade steak from another country? You couldn't imagine that. So when you are sitting there, deciding whether to have your hip replaced at a hospital like in my hometown of Great Bend, America, versus having it done at another facility, you will see that you can have the same procedure done for maybe a fifth of what it costs at other facilities. By the way, we have better outcomes, and we have better customer service as well. Patients deserve pricetags.
You know, other solutions out there are expanding healthcare savings accounts where you can use pretax dollars for different opportunities as well.
If you really want me to solve the riddle of the cost of healthcare, we need to make America healthier again. That is why Republicans, under President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, were trying to pass policies which would lead to a healthier America.
Think about it--70 percent of Americans have a chronic disease. You think about heart disease and hypertension, obesity, diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer, and mental health issues. Ninety percent of the healthcare dollars being spent in this country are spent on those chronic diseases.
Think about our youth. Twenty percent of our youth are on a prescription drug, 30 percent are obese, and 40 percent of our youth have a chronic disease. We have a mental health epidemic in our youth as well.
So if you want to drive down the cost of healthcare, we need to make a healthier America, we need more transparency, we need to promote innovation, and we need to turn patients into consumers again.
Then lastly and most importantly, we need to make America healthy again--and for all the right reasons. The benefit of driving down the cost of healthcare is just one of them. Think about this: America is spending 18 percent of its GDP on healthcare right now. Singapore is spending 4 percent. Most advanced countries are going to spend half of what we do on healthcare.
People ask, well, why are our outcomes worse? It is because we are sick. We have sicker people. The incidence of diabetes, hypertension-- all those things are going through the roof. That is why our outcomes aren't as good as other countries' are.
Rural healthcare. Let's talk about rural healthcare for a second. My goodness, do I care about rural healthcare. I was born in a rural hospital. I had an OB practice for 25 years in rural America. I was on call every day, every other day for 25 years. You can call my wife and ask her--we didn't sleep through the night for 25 years. We delivered a baby almost every day. Then I was blessed to lead a group of doctors and run that rural hospital for over a decade as well. I oversaw three health departments. If anybody understands the importance of rural healthcare, I think it would be me. That is why I have spent a lifetime trying to fix all of these riddles that we have right now.
Now, my friends across the aisle say that they are worried that rural hospitals are closing all of a sudden--all of a sudden--and that they want to try to fix this issue. Well, they have actually contributed to the problem.
But here is one of the most hypocritical things I have ever heard since being up here. So the Democrats say that they are closing the government because they want to save rural hospitals, but the first thing they are going to do is take $50 billion away from our rural health transformation funding--$50 billion from rural health transformation funding--something I have been working on with this administration since the New Year, what that would look like if we had the money. But no. What my friends across the aisle want to do is they want to control healthcare; they want to keep throwing good money after bad money. They think that Medicaid is going to save the day.
Let me tell you something about Medicaid. Only 5 percent of Medicaid funding goes to rural America. Five percent of Medicaid funding goes to
Having Medicaid is not the same as access to healthcare. Who in the world even thinks that could be the case? Talk to any doctor, talk to any patient that has Medicaid. Ask them--let's say they have a herniated disc in their back. Ask them how long it is going to take to get in to see a neurosurgeon. It is going to take 6 months; it is going to take a year.
So, in reality, probably less than half of the doctors, in a true measure, participate in Medicaid. It has to be the most failed system, the biggest waste of money I have ever seen. There are better solutions out there than Medicaid.
I am so excited about, again, solutions. Republicans have solutions. I am so excited about this transformation fund and the opportunity that does that.
Here is what is really rich--here is what is rich. So there are hospitals closing and pharmacies closing today, tomorrow, last year, but that is a result of the Democrats' failed policies. Our legislation that we passed this year--signature legislation that is going to change the course of America--none of that is going to really kick in for 2 or 3 years.
It is just beyond me for the leader of the Democratic Party to sit up here and cry about hospitals closing in rural America today and blaming Republicans. If there is any hospital closing today, tomorrow, next year, the Democrats own it. They own the failed policy, and America gets that. My gosh, I have never heard something so ridiculous in my life.
But, again, Republicans have solutions, and we want to fix it. One of the ways to fix the failure of why these hospitals are failing is the economy that hospitals--rural hospitals are a reflection of the local economy. As agriculture goes, so goes rural America, so goes these hospitals.
By the way, 97 percent of these rural counties voted for President Trump. He is never going to turn his back on them. We as Republicans are not going to turn our backs on them. I wake up every morning trying to figure out, how do we save rural hospitals and rural America? how do we recruit doctors to rural America? how do we recruit nurses to rural America? And all of a sudden, the Democrats have got salvation here, and they care about it? No. They are hiding behind that issue. They are hiding behind it because they don't have any substance to stand on.
Again, the ACA has been the rule of the land for 15 years now. If there are any hospitals failing today, and there are, it is because of the overregulation of the ACA. Just like banks consolidating, hospitals consolidating, healthcare consolidating--all these different entities are consolidating because of overregulation created by Democrats. Our rural transformation funding is going to set those rural counties free to do what they think is best with the money.
All right. Let's go to the next Democrat argument. Let's talk about these COVID-era subsidies for the ACA plans. What a joke. I just absolutely cannot believe they are going to hide behind this one.
So think back to the original ACA. The ACA sets up funding to help supplement insurance premiums for a group of people based upon their ability to pay. That is probably 70, 80 percent of the premium right now, on average, is the way it was set up to be. In some cases, it was 95 percent.
But then COVID comes along, and the Democrats boost those subsidies, so that now many Americans aren't contributing anything to those particular funds. And what this has led to is mass fraud, OK? So these COVID-era subsidies have led to mass fraud.
Let me put some dollars and cents on this. When the ACA was first written, they thought we would be spending maybe $25, $50 billion a year on those subsidies. Well, we are spending $150 billion a year on these subsidies. We think that probably a third of that is waste, fraud, and abuse, and I could spend the next half hour talking about why we think there is waste, fraud, and abuse within it. But the way it was created allows for waste, fraud, and abuse. I can't fix that today. I can't fix it tomorrow. We need to fund the government and get back to work on this issue, and we know how to do it.
But for Republicans to agree to these subsidies being continued, the first thing we have to do is to address the fraud. I bet that is a 90- 10 issue. I bet that 90 percent of Americans would like for us to fix the fraud in that issue and make sure the people who need it the most are getting the help.
So that is one issue on the COVID-era subsidies. The next big issue-- I want to go back to premiums, OK. That is the real issue. These premiums are going to go up 20 percent this year. So regardless of what we do here, the premiums are going to go up 20 percent.
That is where the sting is coming from, is how much these premiums are going up, and my friends across the aisle just want to keep throwing money at it. They want this corporate welfare where these subsidies are basically enriching big insurance companies. That is exactly what is happening. These subsidies are basically going to this consolidated insurance business out there.
Most States, like mine, only have two or three insurance carriers left standing. When these subsidies go up for the people with an ACA plan, guess what? They are going to use that as an excuse to increase your plan that you are getting through that hard-working job of yours as well.
So to have a meaningful discussion about these COVID-era subsidies, we need to--No. 1 is to address the fraud, and No. 2 is we need to address the rate of increase of these premiums as well.
And listen to this: Even if this COVID subsidy went away, the Federal Government on average would be paying 80 percent of the premium. So we would be paying 80 percent rather than 90 percent of the premium. But if the premium has gone up 20 percent, just think about the difference on 80 percent versus 90 percent. That is where the sting is truly coming from.
When do Democrats want to have a serious conversation about this, the real conversation about the cost of healthcare?
My friends across the aisle want to bring these two issues together. They want to, you know, take a hostage. In order to keep the government open, they are saying: You have to give us these COVID-era subsidies, to prolong them. They are supposed to expire December 31 of this year. The Democrats passed this. It was supposed to be for COVID, and, like all the other COVID subsidies that drove us into massive debt, there was a sunset on it. They wrote the law. If they didn't want it to sunset, why didn't they continue the program for infinity just like they did with the original subsidies?
So this, to me, is two different issues. We have the issue here of keeping the government open, and we have the issue here of healthcare. I want to take care of both of them, but it is going to take weeks, probably months, for us to come up with a solution for these COVID subsidies. So I don't think it is fair to keep the government closed down because they weren't willing to talk about this.
It is interesting that we didn't hear a thing about this--at least I didn't--from the minority leader, that he was concerned about this, until just a couple days ago. Again, it makes me think he wanted the shutdown. He wanted the shutdown to appease his liberal left base.
Here is another argument the Democrats are making. You know, there is a fight about healthcare for illegal aliens. I don't think anyone can argue that before our working-families tax-cut bill--our signature bill that is going to grow the economy--that before that legislation, that illegal aliens were getting healthcare. Even the CBO--and I hate to pick and choose when I use the CBO numbers--but the CBO said that 2 million illegal aliens were getting healthcare subsidies or free healthcare because of the loose, just unfettered process that States were using to verify who was eligible for Medicare.
That is not me; that is not a Republican; the CBO said 2 million illegal
So when the Democrats want to go in there and gut that bill and end the fixes, the loopholes we closed, I don't know how they can look America in the eye and say that is not the case.
But regardless, I think that is a small issue. I think that is a red herring. That is not really what the issue is. It is just one more thing they can argue about to get America's eyes off the true challenge within their own party.
The minority leader says we are not negotiating. I just think that is such an untruth, that we are not negotiating--my gosh. The Appropriations Committee--the Republican-led Appropriations Committee-- has been negotiating since President Trump was--actually, since we were--sworn in, in January.
And we have just nothing but compliments to Senator Susan Collins and her team and the Democrats on the Appropriations team. They are doing their job, but Leader Schumer--Minority Leader Schumer--wants to do this negotiation in the back doors. He wants to continue the status quo where, for the government funding, they go back behind a door in a closed office. The cameras are off, and they want to cut a deal.
You can talk about the four corners up here: the Speaker of the House, minority leader of the House, minority leader in the Senate, and then the majority leader, the head of the Senate here, of course, John Thune.
So Senator Schumer thinks they can go behind closed doors--and there are two New Yorkers in that room--and build all their bridges to nowhere. But Republicans want to fund the government in open daylight, through the Appropriations Committee, with the lights on and the cameras on.
The Appropriations Committee passes legislation. There are 12 buckets of funding to fund this discretionary spending that Senate Republicans are trying to lead here--12 buckets of funding. Again, under their great leadership, they have passed 8 of these 12 buckets out of committee. It is almost 90 percent of funding for the Federal Government--discretionary spending, again, of course--that they have already finished the job on.
Senator Susan Collins has done an incredible job getting it through committee--bipartisan. You look at the votes on these bills, and it is 25 to 0, 23 to 2, 24 to 1--huge bipartisan victories done in the light of day. And then those should come here to the floor, and let America see exactly what is in them.
And if there is a bridge to nowhere in there, let me stand up here and offer an amendment to strike that funding, and then let that Senator defend why his or her State should have this bridge to nowhere.
That is what is supposed to happen in the light of day, but Senator Schumer wants to go back to the Dark Ages, where he can go in a back room--a back, New York room--and then cut a deal for all of his bridges to nowhere.
The House, I believe, has passed all 12 of their funding bills out of committee.
Now, we have got three of those across the floor. There are five more sitting there, but Senator Schumer refuses to release anybody on his side to vote for them, even though they voted for them in committee. Why? It is part of the political theater. He wants this shutdown.
So I think America sees this, that we wanted to negotiate in good faith, but Schumer's idea--Senator Schumer's idea--of negotiating is now to go behind closed doors, where he is one of four people in the room, and then go tell the President, who was elected by 28 million people, and he wants to tell him what to do.
So I asked, you know, as we go through this process--I asked myself this morning: So what are AOC and the Squad, who are empowered by the liberal legacy media, asking Senator Schumer to do or really telling him what to do? What are AOC, the Squad, the liberal media--what are they demanding from Senator Schumer?
Well, they told him to take a hostage, right? So he did. He took a hostage. He took these COVID-era subsidies as hostage and the $1.5 trillion of added funding as hostage, and now they are asking him to shoot the hostage.
So the Squad and Senator Schumer, they took the bait. They took the bait--hook, line, and sinker--like jumping into Brer Rabbit's briar patch. And guess what. They are about to get mowed down like dry cornstalks in a Kansas tornado. They took the bait. They took the bait, empowering the White House to finally shrink this Federal Government, this monster of a beast that we have here now.
You know, when Joe Biden was sworn in, in 2021, there were about 2.8 million Federal employees. So President Biden started with 2.8 million. By the time he finished, we had over 3 million Federal employees.
Now, President Trump is going to split the difference there. So we are still not back to pre-COVID, pre-Biden levels of Federal employment.
Look, I am grateful for every Federal employee, and many of them do incredible work. But I think it is no secret that we could all be a little more efficient, that we all could work a little harder. And if we had a few less regulations, I think we would need a few less Federal employees as well.
I don't want to sound callous or not caring. I am grateful for every job an American has. But my goal would be to help move some of these people with some of these Federal jobs and move them into the real world and adding to GDP rather than subtracting from GDP. That would be my goal.
There is a reasonable number of people we need to do the work of the Federal Government, but I just think going from 2.8 million pre-COVID to over 3 million just seems to be too much.
So, like I said, the Squad has led the Democrat Party into Brer Rabbit's briar patch, and they are about to get mowed down like cornstalks in a Kansas twister.
I think the last thing I want to go back to here is that the Democrats were saying that they really want to add $1.5 trillion to our debt. Again, we have $37 trillion in national debt now as a nation. We are spending almost $3 billion a day on interest. That is right, America--$3 billion a day on interest alone, a trillion dollars a year. And they want to add $1.5 trillion to our national debt.
But get this: In November of this last year, America rejected that plan, OK. That is why the voters gave Republicans the White House, the House, and the Senate. They didn't want us to borrow another $1.5 trillion.
So what is motivating the Squad? What is motivating Senator Schumer to do this, to shut down the government? What is motivating their lust for power and their control of the American people?
You know, I think the socialists have always thought, if you controlled healthcare, that is the first step in controlling the people, right? So what is motivating them?
I think No. 1 is--let's just be frank here: It is Trump derangement syndrome. I think that is their No. 1 motivation to shut the government down. It is Trump derangement syndrome. They have a hatred for President Trump that I have never seen anything like this before in my life.
I think the second reason is the liberal left has not realized they lost the election. You know, you go through these stages of grief and denial. That is the first one. The liberals have still not realized they lost the election. Seventy-eight million people voted for Republicans to control the House, the Senate, and the White House. They are rejecting the Democrats' lust for power to control Americans, to borrow from our grandchildren. So that is their motivation.
Look, if they want to change these policies, then go win the election. If you want to change the policies, go win the election. You know, I think back to 2020, and the Democrats had a sweep, right? The Democrats swept the elections in 2020, and they added $2 trillion a year in debt. So they grew the budget from about $5 trillion to $7 trillion overnight. But when it came to keeping the government open, the Republicans didn't go back to them and say: Hey, we are going to keep the government open if you decrease your spending by $2 trillion a year.
We didn't take that hostage. We could have. We could have. Does that
I wasn't happy about it then. I am not happy about it now. I am not happy about the spending levels that we are fighting for right now. I think that they are way too much.
If you want to continue your liberal, socialist policies, Democrats, go win an election. Go win an election. We came through with a bill for America to cut taxes, to grow jobs, to make the government more efficient, and look at what is happening. The gas prices are down. Grocery prices are down. The border is secure. All of those types of things are happening under Republican leadership.
We want to address the cost of healthcare. We truly, truly do. I want to point out that we are just not going to negotiate borrowing another $1.5 trillion for continued throwing money at healthcare issues in order to keep the government open.
Again, these are apples and oranges. We need to open the government back. We need to fund the government for a couple of months--a clean CR. Let Senator Collins and her team, working with Democrats, get that other 10 percent of funding across the finish line. In 2 months' time, we can bring those bills to the floor in front of the American public, debate them, offer amendments, make Senators defend their bridges to nowhere, as I call them, and then continue to work on healthcare.
And it is not going to be easy. It is going to be painful. When $5 trillion is being spent on healthcare in this country every year, and all these big corporations are grabbing that money as it goes by their front desk, it is not going to be easy to drive down the cost of healthcare, but we have to do it.
To me, this is common sense. We are asking the Democrats to vote for a clean CR, based upon levels of spending that every Senate Democrat in here that was in office voted for just 7 months ago. Seven months ago, every Democrat in here voted for these spending limits.
Again, a dozen times under Joe Biden, Republicans walked that plank and kept the government open. I pledge to you; I pledge to every Democrat: No one is going to work harder than I will to help solve this riddle for healthcare, focused on driving the cost of healthcare down.
But at the end of the day, the shutdown keeps us from doing the real work of the people, from having real debates about the cost of healthcare, our national debt, our spending, and all those things. During a shutdown, things freeze up here, and we can't do the work that we need to do in our communities to address these different problems.
One of our Presidents once said this, and I am going to quote him:
On healthcare or COVID subsidies--
And they are feeling it. They are feeling the pain of the government taking so much money. That is my quote.
I go back to the President's quote here:
Boy, if you are a Senator up here and you are listening to anybody back home, I think you understand folks back home are tired of Big Government taking all the money they can earn.
So I ask my friends across the aisle--and they truly are friends. There is not an enemy. There is not a Democrat I would call an enemy. President Reagan said he had no political enemy, only political opponents. There is no difference than when we see gladiators on Sunday playing these football games, and at the end of the game, they are shaking each other's hands. Both parties should fight for what they think is right. But if we stay fixed on the goals--the common goals-- working toward a balanced budget, keeping the government open, driving down the cost of healthcare, and all of these things, I bet most of us agree on those goals.
But in the meantime, we need to keep the government open. We need to pass a clean CR.
Again, let's let the Appropriations Committee continue their negotiation to do their job, as we all work together up here.
So as long as we stay on those same goals--those same goals, like I said--we want to keep the government open. We want to work toward a balanced budget. I want to fix healthcare. I want to fix the cost of healthcare.
To anyone up here who agrees on those same goals, I will reach out my hand across the aisle, and I will pledge that we will listen and work together in good faith. But for today, let's pass a clean CR.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
The government is shut down today, and the responsibility lies squarely on the minority leader and the Democrats. In fact, you can call it his shutdown.
Republicans have offered a clean continuing resolution that would keep government open to allow us to continue working on the appropriations process, and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have called foul. Somehow this is unfair that we ought to have a negotiation. In fact, they are demanding more than a trillion dollars in new spending to be able to keep the government open for just 7 weeks.
They want money for illegal immigrants to get healthcare. They want more subsidies for the pandemic-era insurance. They want to end the rural healthcare fund that Republicans put in place for our rural hospitals. They demand all of this, saying the clean continuing resolution that we have offered is not sufficient.
Hypocrisy. This is hypocrisy.
Thirteen times in the Biden administration Democrats voted for a continuing resolution. Four times they have voted for this exact level of spending; this budget, four times in the last 18 months.
In fact, I have got a chart here that shows the percentage of Democrat Senators who supported these continuing resolutions, and you can see the numbers are almost 100 percent all the way across. And when it is not 100 percent, it is 98 percent. The minority leader himself voted for this very continuing resolution four times in a row before this case. Hypocrisy.
They are putting these unreasonable, radical-left demands in front of us instead of keeping government open.
Let me share with you a quote from our minority leader. In 2013, he said:
Further, the minority leader said on January 24, 2024:
Both sides recognize that a government shutdown would mean crushing delays to veterans programs; delays to nutrition programs for women, infants, and children; delayed benefits for our military; and so much more.
Now, as I mentioned, the Democrats have said this is about healthcare, but let me read you a quote from the junior Senator from Connecticut. He said, when talking about healthcare, that ``there is a time and a place to debate healthcare . . . but not when the funding of the Federal Government, and all the lives that are impacted by it, hang in the balance.''
The hypocrisy of the minority leader of the Democrats is breathtaking. It is stunning.
During the Biden administration, they were happy to pass continuing resolutions--happy to. And, in fact, when given the very same continuing resolution, they voted yes on it four times in a row. Now they say no for partisan political reasons, driven by their radical leftwing.
And, again, they say they want to make this about healthcare. How disingenuous. First of all, let's examine the COVID subsidies that they want. First of all, they are the COVID subsidies. These are pandemic subsidies meant for a pandemic.
Folks, news flash: The pandemic has been over for 4 years. The Democrats
All of a sudden, crying about these subsidies now, just smacks of hypocrisy.
And as I just read you, the junior Senator from Connecticut's remark, when it suited them before, they didn't want to talk about healthcare when they were talking about continuing resolutions and government shutdowns.
Folks, this shutdown does mean that folks in my home State of Nebraska could see services diminish. It could mean that, for example, Social Security offices may be understaffed--Social Security checks are going to go out, but services may be diminished. Women and children will not be able to enroll in the WIC Program. The person who is supposed to help with IRS questions is not available. National parks may be closed. All these services may be degraded and all because the Democrats are holding the American public and Nebraskans in my State hostage for their radical-left demands.
The Democrats should do what they have done 13 times in the Biden administration, vote for a continuing resolution. Help us continue our work on appropriations because that is the way the system is supposed to work.
We have already passed three bipartisan appropriations bills. The Appropriations Committee has more bipartisan bills ready to work on.
This can all be over if the Democrats will simply vote for a continuing resolution that they have already voted yes on four times over the last 18 months and 13 times during the Biden administration.
If the American public is looking for answers, they have to look no further than the Democrats to find out who is responsible for this. Republicans have offered this continuing resolution and have voted for it. And, in fact, three Democrats have voted for the continuing resolution, including an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats.
So we will continue to do our part by voting for this continuing resolution and by continuing to put it up to give the Democrats a chance to get government back open so we can continue the people's business and work on these appropriations bills, which is what we are supposed to be doing.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Mr. President, I rise today as millions of Americans stand on the edge of a healthcare cliff. I join my Democratic colleagues in continuing to fight to reopen the government and to prevent Americans' healthcare costs from skyrocketing.
A critical part of governing is finding common ground. You don't always pick your neighbors, as the Presiding Officer knows--we have worked together for many, many years--but you find a way to live next to your neighbors, as we do, and to work with them.
Making healthcare more affordable should be a bipartisan issue. And some of my Republican colleagues know we need to act and we need to get something done and the overwhelming majority of Americans agree. I worked that way in the Senate. For a number of years, I was ranked No. 1 for bipartisan bills and No. 3 for passing bills into law because when we sit down together to work things out, we can get things done.
Courage is about willing to stand next to someone you don't always agree with for the betterment of this country. That means finding some common ground. It doesn't mean saying: My way or the highway. It doesn't mean, when you are the President of the United States, canceling meetings, doing one at the last minute, and then, with the Democratic leaders of our country, putting up a deepfake video that was incredibly offensive, poking at them instead of taking this issue seriously. They came to him in good faith and still do.
Unfortunately, right now, our Republican colleagues are not working with us to find a bipartisan agreement to prevent the government shutdown and address the healthcare crisis. We know that even when they float ideas--which we surely do appreciate--in the end, the President appears to make the call. He made the call on tariffs, even though so many of our Republican colleagues disagree with him on that. He made the call on certain nominees like R.F.K., Jr. He made the call when it came to certain provisions in the ``Big Beautiful Betrayal'' bill, which many of our colleagues didn't like, including the nutrition program decision at the end to reward the 10 States with the highest error rate when it comes to SNAP. I know none of them are in the Midwest.
That is why my Democratic colleagues and I want to reach an agreement, not only with the Republicans in this Chamber, but we also need the President at the table. He prides himself for the ``Art of the Deal,'' and it is time for him to make a deal. We are working so hard to make sure that more than 20 million Americans who rely on the Affordable Care Act--it is called different things in different States; in my State, it is called MNsure--have access to affordable health coverage. It tends to be a lot of individual buyers in the market. It tends to be a lot of small businesses. And over a quarter of the farmers in this country rely on it.
Again, it is called different things in different States, but it is a plan to allow people who maybe aren't at a big corporation to be able to have healthcare. A while back, maybe they didn't want to leave a big company or if they left without being in a big company or in the government or something like that, they couldn't even get healthcare at all. That is why the Affordable Care Act was passed.
I would make a lot of improvements to it, and we do have some opportunities to do that. But right now, we need to make sure we don't push them off a healthcare insurance premium cliff. This is on top of the draconian Medicaid cuts that are going to push 15 million people off their healthcare that were in the One Big Beautiful Bill and also the Medicare cuts, which no one intended to have $500 billion in Medicare cuts, I guess, of our colleagues on the other side. But the debt accumulated from the bill of $4 trillion was so big, it triggered automatic Medicare cuts, which are hitting and going to hit rural hospitals, which they are now putting into their bottom line.
While they are staring that down and the Medicaid cuts, they are also looking at the fact that so many of their patients and people who visit rural clinics--those who often tend to be in the hospitals are on the Affordable Care Act because rural areas--and I am focused on rural areas because I went on a 13-county tour in my State--rural areas tend to have more people that are small business owners percentagewise and also that are farmers and ranchers.
So this is not a December thing; this is not a January thing; this is a now thing because those premiums are hitting November 1 when that market opens up. Right now, millions of Americans are staring down the reality that their healthcare premiums could double. For many families, that will mean making impossible choices to make ends meet or losing coverage altogether.
This is preventable, but we have to act now. Over 20 million Americans are enrolled in an Affordable Care Act health insurance plan. If we don't act, they are going to be forced to make impossible decisions. And that doubling number that says the premiums are going to double came out of a study just this week by the Kaiser Family Foundation. If Congress doesn't come together in a bipartisan way to extend these credits, these families, farmers, ranchers, small business owners, entrepreneurs, seniors, people living in rural communities will have to pay an average of double every month, hundreds of dollars more every month--not every year, every month--to keep their health insurance.
In Minnesota, nearly 90,000 people will see their premiums increase by double digits. You can say: Well, I am not on that kind of healthcare. I work at such and such company. You don't know the day, especially with these tariffs, when people are starting to get laid off at manufacturing companies like John Deere or that a farmer's business goes bankrupt--his farm goes bankrupt because bankruptcies for small farms are at an alltime high in the last 5 years--you don't know when
For many, this will put healthcare coverage out of reach. This is not political theater, I say to the President, after he posted that offensive video. This is not a joke. These are real Americans who are facing these challenges.
The loss of this tax credit will raise premiums for everyone. Minnesotans have already started to receive notice that their costs will increase. One constituent is bracing for more than a 27-percent increase in their premium next year. Another whose husband's job was just eliminated called the 19-percent increase in health insurance costs their family is facing incomprehensible with the loss of income that they already face. And this is before adding in the extra costs people will be forced to take on if the tax credits are not extended.
So, if you noticed, I used those numbers 19 and 20, and you are thinking: Well, she just said they doubled. This is before that happens. This is what is happening in the market right now because of a number of factors going on that the President should be dealing with.
People are going to be socked with this, smacked with this, right while the price of groceries has been going up. I think the President promised he was going to bring costs down on day 1, and we are on something like day 255, and the opposite is happening. Anyone who goes into a grocery store and walks out and looks at their receipt knows exactly what I am talking about. As to the people who are in the grocery aisle and see the cost of beef, they know what I am talking about. As to the people who get their electricity bills, they know what I am talking about. Those aren't deepfakes. Those aren't fake videos that the President puts up on Truth Social. Those are real bills.
So, especially as this is going on because of these tariffs--and could I just add, since I have the floor here, as to the latest on tariffs on sofas and cabinets and lumber? It is already too expensive for Americans to buy a house or to rent a house or to rent an apartment, and now we are going to see major increases to home furnishings--and while we are in the middle of a housing crisis. It is literally one of the worst things he could do right now, but he did it.
So all that is not nothing. All of that kind of sets the stage for why the healthcare cost, which is one of the most expensive for people just on a yearly basis, is so devastating.
One of my constituents shared that while they planned for higher premiums, they didn't expect a more than $2,000 increase for the same coverage next year. Like so many others, they were concerned that even if they switched to a cheaper plan--and you know how that is. You are betting, and you are trying to guess and estimate what is going to go wrong in your family. Is your kid going to have some kind of surgery or break a leg? Is your husband going to have to have some kind of healthcare checkup that will be expensive? You have to always calculate those things. Like so many others, again, they were thinking ``Well, should I switch to a cheaper plan to save money and then hope I don't get sick?'' and then they would be more exposed to higher costs. Those are the kinds of things people are doing right now.
It is like the woman who Jeanne Shaheen had at a spotlight forum, which we did this last week, who had M.S. She had actually talked to her doctor about whether she could ration--kind of like people used to do with insulin for diabetes before we put those caps on insulin--could she ration her medication for M.S. The doctor said: No. That is not how this works. It will just grow the pressure in your brain and make your symptoms worse.
Another Minnesotan wrote to me that without the tax credits, their family of four would have to downgrade their health plan and spend significantly more on their health insurance than they do on their mortgage.
Another said that he expected his family would have to pay an additional $16,000 per year for their health coverage if they had no healthcare tax credits.
One Minnesotan shared:
Just because someone can't afford to stay insured doesn't mean they need healthcare less.
One of the things that I learned that maybe I hadn't thought through when I went to these rural hospitals was the fact that because there is a high percentage of these farmers and people in small towns on these plans--ours is called MNsure, like I said--they are already hit by the Medicaid cuts--the hospitals--by the Medicare cuts because it is an older population, but they actually cared a lot about this--the doctors, the nurses, the people running the hospitals--because they know that the people won't be able to afford this if these premiums double. They will choose not to get healthcare insurance. Then what will happen is they will end up in their emergency rooms in hospitals that are already strapped thin, and they won't be able to afford--they will treat them, but they won't be able to afford it for a long period of time. So they, time and time again, mention to me that these affordable tax credits expiring or not being maintained will create a major problem.
Already, approximately one-third of Americans report not taking medications as prescribed due to the costs.
Jason, from Pennsylvania, was able to get lifesaving coverage when he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
He said:
Now faced with the expiration of these credits, he understands the consequences for people like him.
He said:
Another cancer survivor who has always made health insurance a priority also fears what unaffordable health insurance could mean for patients like her.
She said:
Already, as I noted, because of Medicaid cuts that were passed in the big, beautiful betrayal of a bill, more than 300 rural hospitals, 200 health centers, and 500 nursing homes are likely to close. This means less accessible care for rural communities, longer drives to access care, fewer places to seek care in an emergency, and more hours taken away from work for more caregiving or other responsibilities. Fewer patients will go to that doctor's visit or get that lifesaving screening. They will not get the surgeries they need. Many will get sicker. Ultimately, as I noted, more patients are going to end up in emergency rooms, and these hospitals are going to have to take on the additional burden of more uncompensated care.
None of this happens in a vacuum. As I noted, these Medicaid cuts-- and Medicaid provides healthcare for at least one in five rural Minnesotans, more than 31 percent of children in our State, and more than half of all nursing home residents across our State. So this is about seniors, people with disabilities, and kids, and that is why Medicaid is so important.
For me, my dad, in his later years, got late-onset Alzheimer's. He was in one place, and then we moved him to another place. But I knew the exact date as to when his savings were going to go away, and we were going into those savings. Sadly, we lost him. But I knew that exact date because I was going to have to move him to another nursing home--another assisted living--that took Medicaid, and I made plans with them. I knew that date.
So many people in this country know that date. Even if they are not a senior who is relying on Medicaid, their kids, their spouses, their grandkids kind of know when those savings--if they had
So Medicaid goes way beyond the individuals who have no savings at all. It actually helps people who do have some savings. It helps people who have worked their lives through, like my dad. Medicaid is there as a safety net for people.
Over the last few months, I have heard from thousands of constituents, including seniors in Minnesota, from Sunrise Village in Milaca that I visited, to Senior Living at Watkins in Winona, to the Pillars of Prospect Park and Episcopal Homes in the metro. They are worried about their healthcare.
I heard from one constituent from Inver Grove Heights, who told me that Medicaid helps her to afford the cost of her father's memory care.
I think about what a constituent who works with adults with disabilities told me. She is a mental health therapist for a woman who had a tracheotomy and is wheelchair-bound and requires nursing care. She is also the aunt of a man with Down syndrome, with many needs, who is in a residential home.
She said: I am concerned about the possible Medicaid service cuts to the people who most need it.
I have also heard from a constituent named Lola, whose daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. A social worker advised Lola that her employer-based insurance may not cover the cancer treatments her daughter needed, and she connected her with Medicaid. She said that ``Medicaid helped completely'' with the surgeries and the T-cell therapy. Lola said, ``Using my own insurance would have caused a lot of delays, because it would not have covered'' what she needed.
I heard from Robby, who, after years in an adult foster care facility, now lives independently with a roommate because of Medicaid's disability waiver and community-based services.
I have gotten to meet some of these incredible Minnesotans while visiting care providers who help people with disabilities.
I think about the progress we have made so people can either live in their homes or they can live in a group home, and they can have jobs. We just can't go backwards.
People will feel the impacts of these cuts, and we know it.
I will close with this: After learning that her insurance cost is set to skyrocket next year, a woman asked:
We can do something, and it is something that so many of my colleagues agree with, especially after the cuts that were made, especially after the bludgeoning tariffs and what they are doing to the cost of things for people. It is not going to fix everything, that is for sure, but it is going to save a lot of lives, and it is going to help people contain costs so they don't go over that cliff.
As Minnesota's former Senator--I have his desk--Hubert Humphrey once said: The moral test of government isn't just how it treats the young and the healthy; it is also how it treats the sick, the elderly, and people with disabilities. That is definitely true for us right now, and I believe this is a moral test for all Americans.
At a time when so many families are struggling just to make ends meet, we can't sit back here and just play a blame game and look at the polls and da, da, da. We can do something. It is really pretty simple: We must work to protect Americans' access to healthcare. We must protect our rural hospitals. We must address our healthcare crisis.
As I know, it is not a December or a January problem, it is a now problem, and it is completely within our grasp to do this, and it is certainly within the President's grasp to bring his party with him.
So stop, Mr. President, posting those fake, offensive videos, and start helping Americans with their healthcare.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
