Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Condemning Donald Trump And Congressional Republicans For Inflicting An Unprecedented Healthcare And Hunger Crisis On Millions Of Americans

Washington, D.C. - Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor urging Donald Trump and Republicans to work for the American people and end this healthcare crisis before it exacerbates, and to not manufacture an unnecessary and extremely harmful hunger crisis by refusing to issue SNAP benefits. Below are Senator Schumer's remarks, which can also be viewed here:

This weekend, Americans face a healthcare crisis unprecedented in modern times. Open enrollment begins in just two days. And Republicans have spent this entire shutdown with their heads in the sand - a shutdown they are causing because they would not negotiate with Democrats.

Republicans are pretending the ACA premium crisis does not exist. But they should go ask families who are getting their insurance premium increases today, tomorrow, on Saturday. Republicans have brought Americans to the brink of financial disaster. They have ignored a growing catastrophe. We have demanded they act, and they have refused. And the shutdown is on them. This healthcare crisis is on them. And the American people will see so this weekend.

Let start with some facts to show the breath, depth, and severity of the ACA crisis.

If the ACA enhanced premium tax credits expire, over 20 million Americans will see their premiums more than double on average. That is a 114% increase, according to KFF. That is a fact.

Four million people on ACA plans will lose health coverage entirely if these tax credits don't get extended. That is also a fact.

If these enhanced tax credits expire, the people hurt the most by far will be working families, people who live paycheck to paycheck, small business owners, farmers, ranchers, older Americans. They're all going to be sitting at their kitchen table this Friday night or Sunday evening saying, how the heck are we going to pay these bills? We can't afford $4,000 a year more for health insurance. Do my kids get no healthcare? Do we have to lose the doctors who have been treating us for a long time? What if we have to travel 50 or 100 miles to go a clinic or a hospital? Are my parents going to be kicked out of their nursing home and I have no place to put them? This is a fact. People are hurt badly, probably more than any other healthcare crisis we've had.

It will also hurt Americans who work more than one job and Americans who live in red states. That is a fact.

And here's another one: this crisis didn't come out of the blue. It's not that people are just learning about it. It's not that senators are just learning about it this week. Democrats have demanded that Republican leaders negotiate with us about this crisis since the summer.

Republicans said no.

Republicans had more than three chances this year to vote on extending these ACA premium tax credits, as far back as February.

Republicans said no.

They put together a partisan bill that did nothing to improve the healthcare crisis, and that had no input from Democrats, and said take it or leave it.

Republicans had more than three chances this year to vote on extending these ACA premium tax credits, as far back as February.

What did Republicans say? No, no, and no.

Today, Republicans still insist they will not move a muscle to fix ACA premiums until it's too late. They have spent this entire shutdown avoiding talking about healthcare, and when that didn't work, they resorted to lying - just making up total lies - about who gets the healthcare and who doesn't.

And as they trigger a healthcare crisis, they're also now triggering a hunger crisis: halting SNAP benefits and ordering the Department of Agriculture to rip its own contingency plan, despite the fact that the money is there. Over $6 billion in emergency funds exist that could keep SNAP going, and Trump has said, don't spend a dime, we want to use hungry people as hostages in this crisis. Trump is a vindictive politician and a heartless man.

Meanwhile, here in the Senate, this is still Leader Thune's position on the ACA: let's deal with this house fire later. But the house is on fire.

Republicans are living in a fantasy, pretending as if the issue will fix itself. But starting November 1^st, so many Americans are going to have to make choices: do they give up their healthcare? Do they have to take a plan that has many higher deductibles and co-pays with different doctors and hospitals, and watch their families suffer when they're sick?

That's what reality looks like for people back home, and yet our Republican colleagues do nothing.

In Louisiana, the average sixty-year-old couple making $85,000 a year on a middle-tier plan will see their premiums increase by $25,700. That's right. How does that family come up with $25,000? People in their 50s, they're looking for their retirement. What are they going to do?

In South Dakota, that same couple on the same plan would see an annual average increase of $26,000.

In Florida, it's an annual increase of $27,000.

Republicans have brought the American people to the brink. Republicans have refused to do anything. They have sat on their hands, stuck their heads in the sand, and now families - millions of families from one end of America to the other, mostly, actually, in red states - face the specter of financial disaster.

Because when healthcare costs go up, more people lose coverage, more people get sick, and more people die. Republicans just don't seem to care.

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