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| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| Next, we take you to a news conference with House Democratic leaders on the proposed Republican budget and its impact on Medicare and the SNAP program. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| I'm grateful to be joined by Vice Chair Liu and Dr. Schreier and Representative Brown joining us here today to talk about the importance of protecting health care and nutrition across this country. | ||
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unidentified
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I want to begin by offering our condolences to the victims of deadly storms in Missouri and Kentucky. | |
| We also want to send President Biden and his family our support as they grapple with the former president's cancer diagnosis. | ||
| We know that Joe Biden will approach this fight with the same grace that he's shown throughout his life. | ||
| We also know that Joe Biden would be the first to say that every American deserves the same level of health care that he is being provided. | ||
| That's why House Democrats are fighting to protect health care that Donald Trump and House Republicans are attacking. | ||
| In the dead of night, House Republicans are working to ram through their agenda to kick millions of Americans off of health insurance and to take food assistance from families who need it most. | ||
| As grocery prices rise, they're going to take food out of the mouths of mothers, children, and veterans while making health care even more expensive, just for the single purpose of providing more tax cuts for billionaires and corporations who continue to make record profits. | ||
| Remember, the Republican budget doesn't make Medicaid or SNAP more efficient or more fair. | ||
| All this bill does is ensure that billionaires who have never had to worry about a hospital bill or putting food on the table can continue to pay less in taxes than teachers, firefighters, and nurses. | ||
| Only Democrats want to make health care more accessible and more affordable for everyone. | ||
| Republicans are hell-bent on driving up costs for health insurance and ending basic need programs. | ||
| They are willing to inflict pain on millions of Americans just to make their campaign donors happy. | ||
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That is wrong. | |
| And we will continue to fight back at every step for the American people so they can have the peace of mind of a good-paying job with good benefits. | ||
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unidentified
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Next, I'll turn it over to Vice Chair Ted Luke. | |
| Thank you, Chairman Aguilar, and honored to be joined today by Congressmembers Kim Schreider and Chantal Brown. | ||
| First, I'd like to talk about the charges against Congresswoman Lamonica MacGyver. | ||
| Those charges are baseless and politically motivated. | ||
| Three reasons why. | ||
| First, Congresswoman McGuyver had a statutory authority to be at that detention center. | ||
| She was conducting her oversight duties. | ||
| Second, if what she did was purportedly so awful that it results in criminal charges, how is it possible they literally gave her a tour of the facility afterwards? | ||
| They escorted her around and gave her a tour of that facility while she was conducting her oversight. | ||
| And third, she was trying to prevent the unlawful arrest of the mayor in Newark. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| She was right because the Trump Justice Department dropped all charges against the Mayor of Newark. | ||
| So we asked them to also drop charges against La Monica. | ||
| This is a baseless, politically motivated distraction. | ||
| And what are they distracting from? | ||
| This big, ugly bill that they're going to have a meeting on at 1 a.m. in the morning. | ||
| I mean, who does that? | ||
| You do that because you don't want the American public to know what's in your big, ugly bill. | ||
| But we know what's in it. | ||
| It has the largest cut to health care in U.S. history, about a trillion dollars. | ||
| It then also is going to kick off approximately 14 million people off of health care. | ||
| And why are they doing this? | ||
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To impose the largest tax cut for billionaires in U.S. history. | |
| So that's basically what this big, ugly bill does, and to try and move it through in a dead of night at 1 a.m. | ||
| We ask the Republicans to listen to American people and work on what Democrats are trying to work on, which is lowering the costs of rent and groceries and consumer products. | ||
| That's what we should be focused on. | ||
| And it's now my honor to introduce the great representative from the state of Washington, Dr. Kim Schreier. | ||
| Well, thank you, Vice Chair Liu. | ||
| It's really an honor to be here, but the reason is outrageous. | ||
| And I want to express that outrage on behalf of my constituents. | ||
| That the Republicans at this moment are attempting to make the largest cut ever in Medicaid and the largest cut ever in SNAP. | ||
| That would be $715 billion out of Medicaid, which would kick 13.7 million Americans off of their health insurance. | ||
| And let me just reiterate, why are they doing this? | ||
| They are doing this to pay for a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans like Elon Musk. | ||
| It is morally bankrupt and it is fiscally incredibly irresponsible. | ||
| We just spent 26 and a half hours in the Energy and Commerce Committee last week spending the vast majority of that time, and by the way, starting at about 2 o'clock in the morning, talking about these cuts to Medicaid and how they would devastate our constituents and also the broader health care system. | ||
| I want to be clear, one out of three Washingtonians depend on Medicaid. | ||
| Most of them don't even know they're on Medicaid because we call it Apple Health. | ||
| And I'm trying to make that point so that people understand how this impacts them personally. | ||
| So I think about, as a pediatrician, I think about my patients on Medicaid or on Apple Health who will no longer be able to come to their pediatrician's office for screenings, for a simple cold, for a cough, and get treated in a half hour. | ||
| Now they're going to go to the emergency room, the most expensive place to get care. | ||
| They're going to drive up costs. | ||
| That cost will be provided for free. | ||
| And then everybody pays. | ||
| And I think then about my patients who are not on Medicaid because they're going to be waiting longer in the emergency room. | ||
| They're going to be paying more. | ||
| Premiums are going to go up if we want to keep these hospitals and emergency rooms open. | ||
| And that brings us to other parts of my district, the rural areas, where hospitals may close because they depend so heavily on Medicaid and Medicare. | ||
| I want to tell you a quick story of a little four-year-old girl named Isla in my district. | ||
| She is the outcome of a normal, uneventful pregnancy. | ||
| She was lucky enough to go to our rural hospital called Kittitas Valley Healthcare. | ||
| And they have a labor and delivery department. | ||
| She was delivered. | ||
| There were major complications. | ||
| She almost died, but they had the staff and the expertise to rescue her, to stabilize her, and to life flight her to Seattle Children's. | ||
| And then I have been reflecting, as have her parents, who are insured, about what would have happened had Medicaid been cut, had labor and delivery there been cut, had she not had that opportunity for rescue and for transport to save her life. | ||
| And we all know what the answer would have been. | ||
| I've been in hundreds of deliveries. | ||
| Some go well, some don't, and you don't always know until that moment. | ||
| So I want to emphasize Medicaid is part of the three-legged stool that is our health care system. | ||
| If Medicaid is cut in this dramatic way, that stool will fall. | ||
| It'll mean hospital closures, higher rates for all of us, emergency room long waits, a sicker community, and a poorer community. | ||
| And it is reckless and morally reprehensible. | ||
| So at this point, I'm going to turn this over to Representative Chantelle Brown from Ohio to talk about the terrible cuts that they are doing to food benefits, also for our most vulnerable populations. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Doctor. | ||
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| I'm Congresswoman Chantel Brown, Vice Ranking Member of the House Agriculture Committee and representing Ohio's 11th Congressional District. | ||
| I'm honored to be here along with Chair Aguilar, Vice Chair Liu, and Congresswoman Schreier. | ||
| Last week, we saw this legislation up and close in the Agriculture Committee. | ||
| And Ranking Member Craig and my Democratic colleagues on agriculture fought this legislation for two days. | ||
| I didn't just read the bill. | ||
| I felt it. | ||
| I felt the cruelty. | ||
| I felt the callousness. | ||
| And let me tell you, I was angry. | ||
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unidentified
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I am still angry. | |
| $300 billion in cuts. | ||
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unidentified
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Let me repeat that. | |
| $300 billion in cruel, calculated cuts to nutrition programs. | ||
| And on top of that, onerous new restrictions and requirements that are designed to deny people the help they need. | ||
| If this bill passes, millions, yes, millions of Americans are going to lose nutrition benefits they desperately need. | ||
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And for what? | |
| The biggest cut to food assistance in history, just to hand millionaires a $68,000 tax break and the top 0.1% a staggering $300,000. | ||
| Let me tell you what this means for my community. | ||
| One in five, one in five households in my district in Northeast Ohio rely on SNAP. | ||
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That's not some statistic from somewhere. | |
| That's my neighbors. | ||
| That's my family. | ||
| Those are my church members. | ||
| It is me. | ||
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Because growing up, I was one of those households. | |
| And the issue of work requirements really hits home for me, literally. | ||
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I had epilepsy growing up. | |
| I had petite male seizures. | ||
| And my mother, my strong, brave, exhausted mother, couldn't work. | ||
| Not because she didn't want to, but because she couldn't leave her child who might collapse at any moment. | ||
| My mom didn't want to be on food stamps. | ||
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No parent wants that. | |
| But we needed it. | ||
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And this bill, this bill would have denied us that lifeline. | |
| We're taking assistance away from people that need it to give those resources to people that don't. | ||
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Make no mistake, this is not fiscal responsibility. | |
| This is not belt tightening. | ||
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This is a giveaway. | |
| People who rely on SNAP, they're not leading easy lives. | ||
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They're caregivers. | |
| They have people at home with disabilities and serious illnesses, children. | ||
| And these folks are not hard to find. | ||
| I had one woman contact me, Cheryl from Cleveland Heights. | ||
| She's retired. | ||
| Her husband is disabled. | ||
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Her father is 92 years old, and he's disabled. | |
| She worked in advertising for 25 years. | ||
| Now she's got a house full of people to take care of. | ||
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And they rely on SNAP. | |
| This bill punishes Cheryl and people like her. | ||
| It takes away the basic benefits they need to survive, all to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest among us. | ||
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unidentified
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And make no mistake, this bill will make us sicker. | |
| This bill will make us poor. | ||
| This bill will make us weaker. | ||
| So it is my privilege to stand here with my colleagues and fight this bill. | ||
| We cannot let this pass. | ||
| And with that, I am honored to yield back to our chairman, Mr. Aguilar. | ||
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unidentified
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Thanks, Chantelle. | |
| Questions? | ||
| Nick? | ||
| I want to ask about the charges against Congresswoman McIver. | ||
| What options are available to Democratic leadership to respond to this? | ||
| Democratic leadership put a letter out yesterday. | ||
| Vice Chair Lou and I signed that letter. | ||
| You know, we'll have more to say in the coming days, but I do think, as the Vice Chair mentioned, this is part of a distraction. | ||
| One, this is ridiculous that they are trying to stop a member of Congress from doing her oversight responsibilities, but it's not lost on any of us the timing of this decision. | ||
| They would like to distract from the dark of night attack on health care and supplemental nutrition. | ||
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unidentified
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They want us to be outraged, and we are, but they want us to only talk about this. | |
| And we know the importance of the work that we have in front of us, especially this week, is to advocate for the millions of people, as Dr. Schreier mentioned, who are going to get kicked off of health care if they pass this terrible bill. | ||
| So we're going to continue to support and uplift Lamonica McIver. | ||
| We're going to be supportive of her efforts. | ||
| We will use tools that we have to be supportive and also to shine a light on the dysfunction and then incompetence of this administration when it comes to these specific charges. | ||
| But let's be clear, she did not do anything wrong. | ||
| She was doing her job as a member of Congress. | ||
| Anybody saying otherwise is telling a lie, but that's not anything new for this administration. | ||
| An administration that wants to talk about law and order, yet they pardon folks on day one who tried to carry out the insurrection here in this dome, one member of which was recently just arrested again. | ||
| Some person who got a full and complete pardon from Donald Trump was arrested for robbery and home invasion, I believe. | ||
| That's the type of individual that Donald Trump wants to support. | ||
| So we're not letting the Trump administration lecture us on public safety when they put all of us at risk, every American at risk, when they let these individuals out. | ||
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unidentified
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A follow-up on that. | |
| I assume you've seen the video with Congressman McIver and the other members of Congress who are there and the mayor. | ||
| There is a moment where she is, I think, protecting Congressman Bonnie Barthon Coleman, and she's pushing at a member of law enforcement, an ICE agent. | ||
| You can see her elbow. | ||
| I see her pushing. | ||
| I hear you saying she did nothing wrong, but I want you to respond specifically to that moment when she's pushing back at a member of law enforcement and how you think that is not anything wrong. | ||
| I'm not trying to catch judgment, but that is the moment that's at the center, I think, of this issue. | ||
| Yeah, I understand. | ||
| I've seen the videos as well where these masked ICE agents are themselves, I think, trying to impede members of Congress from carrying out their duties. | ||
| If I accept the premise of what you're saying, why would they allow three representatives to spend an hour on a tour after this? | ||
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unidentified
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If they felt that there was something done that was wrong and untoward, why on earth would they open up the gates and to say, come on in, we'd like to give you your tour now? | |
| Nobody there felt intimidated. | ||
| Their goal of these agents was to intimidate members of Congress and to intimidate people who were gathered there. | ||
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unidentified
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But Representative McGuyver and the House Democrats are not going to be intimidated from doing our jobs. | |
| I understand what they are saying. | ||
| I understand that the administration is saying in this charging document that Representative McGyver put her hands on an official. | ||
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unidentified
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But nothing that they have indicated says that in that day, in that moment, any of those officers felt threatened or concerned. | |
| This is political charges based after the fact to distract us and to take attention away from the work that we're doing to protect health care from people. | ||
| And we're going to continue to have Representative MacGyver's back and support her in these trumped-up charges. | ||
| And we're not going to take a back seat to lectures on public safety from Donald Trump, his former personal attorney, or the Trump administration and other corrupt DOJ. | ||
| Anything else? | ||
| Michael. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chair. | ||
| Representative Jared Goldman announced this morning that he would forego a Senate bid and run for re-election in the House. | ||
| Yesterday, Lauren Underwood announced that she would be running for re-election. | ||
| Those are two members that I know you hold in high regard. | ||
| Can you just speak to the American people about how important those members' re-elections will be as you all pursue the majority next year? | ||
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unidentified
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These are members who are making, in Lauren's case, she sits at the leadership table. | |
| These are members who are making lasting contributions for their states here doing work. | ||
| And they know the importance of fighting for health care in rural communities. | ||
| Both of these representatives have spent time and serve rural communities. | ||
| They know what's at stake with these terrible cuts that Donald Trump and House Republicans are proposing. | ||
| We appreciate their commitment and their service to this caucus. | ||
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unidentified
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We look forward to working with them in the years ahead. | |
| But I think this speaks more to the issues of the day that they feel compelled to be a voice on. | ||
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unidentified
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This is still the House of Representatives. | |
| We have colleagues who we love and support who are going to run for other jobs and other positions. | ||
| We wish them well. | ||
| But the importance of Lauren and Jared stepping up and staying where they're at isn't lost on any of us, and we look forward to working with them in the years to come. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
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unidentified
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Thanks. | |
| On McIver, again, is part of the plan here to sort of prevail on some of the Democrats in the Senate to prevent Alina Hava from being confirmed by the Senate? | ||
| I think, well, one, I think that Alina Hava is doing everything she can in her own right to sabotage her own future as a U.S. attorney. | ||
| Clearly, Donald Trump is very comfortable appointing people who can't get confirmed to those positions. | ||
| We see Ed Martin being one of them. | ||
| I'll leave the senators to discuss their process for approval. | ||
| But I think it's clear anybody who wants to take an oath to protect the people should actually do that rather than work on trumped-up charges that have no basis, in fact. | ||
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unidentified
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On Medicaid, one way Republicans cut spending, cut people off Medicaid, is cutting the reimbursement rate to states where state Medicaid programs include non-citizens. | |
| In California, Governor Newsom, it's not cutting off all non-citizens, but he's capping that. | ||
| I wondered, there are two of you from California, one, if you support that. | ||
| Two, if states girding for this bill should be reducing the number of non-citizens preparing for what Republicans might do here who are eligible for Medicaid. | ||
| I know they're going after SNAP 2, but just on the Medicaid part. | ||
| Yeah, let's be very clear. | ||
| I want the vice chair to speak and actually Dr. Schreier as well. | ||
| But let's be very clear. | ||
| No federal Medicaid dollars are going to provide health care to individuals who are undocumented. | ||
| I think you'll accept that, and that is a current fact. | ||
| Some states have chosen. | ||
| Some states have said, including Washington and the state of California, have chosen to provide health care to everyone because, mind you, people will get health care. | ||
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unidentified
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We can help choose, and our state leaders have said, we would prefer you to. | |
| We'll leave this recorded program here. | ||
| You can finish watching it, though, if you go to our website, cspam.org. | ||
| now to remarks from president trump as we make a historic announcement about the golden dome missile defense shield that's something we want and ronald reagan wanted it many years ago but they didn't have the technology but it's something we're going to have We're going to have it at the highest level. |