Video: Kaine Speaks on Senate Floor Ahead of Vote to Undo Trump Administration Rule That Adds Red Tape to ACA Enrollment Process

FULL VIDEO OF KAINE'S REMARKS ARE AVAILABLE HERE.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, spoke on the Senate floor ahead of a vote on legislation he sponsors to repeal a Trump Administration rule that adds red tape to the Affordable Care Act enrollment process, making it harder for Americans to enroll in health coverage. The legislation will be voted on today and needs a simple majority to pass.

"I'm glad to join my colleagues to talk about the upcoming vote on Senate Joint Resolution 84: the use of the Congressional Review Act to strike down a recent regulatory attack on the Affordable Care Act launched by the Trump Administration," said Kaine. "Even the Trump Administration's own experts at CMS-the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services-say implementation of this rule could lead up to 1.8 million people to lose health insurance just this year, 2026. That would be devastating. On top of the premium increases that people have seen because the Affordable Care Act extended tax credits were not extended when tax cuts for the wealthiest were extended, this additional burden on this 1.8 million-person population is unacceptable."

"I wanted to focus, in particular, on a kind of person who is really going to be affected by the Trump rule if we do not affirmatively embrace this Congressional Review Act resolution," Kaine continued. "And that is self-employed entrepreneurs and gig workers."

"One of the challenges about the American health care system before the Affordable Care Act was it was very, very difficult to buy health insurance if you were an individual entrepreneur, if you had a very small business," said Kaine. "Then you also had a huge group of people working with companies that had insurance-that had this great American dream of an idea to start their own business-but they couldn't do it because if they were to leave their large employer to go off and follow their dream, they couldn't get health insurance."

"One ever the very salutary effects of the ACA has been to enable people to pursue their dream and become innovators, or entrepreneurs, or gig workers and work in the way and in the flexible circumstance they choose," Kaine continued.

"The rule that has been put in place by the Trump Administration isn't going to make it particularly hard for large-group plans to just reup insurance, but it will make it very hard for those individuals that don't have a H.R. department fighting for them, that have to figure it out all their own, it will make it very hard for them to negotiate the marketplace and buy insurance," Kaine said.

"We often say … small businesses and start-ups are the backbones of the American economy," Kaine concluded. "I grew up in a House with a dad who worked for a huge company, and it was his dream to start his own business. And he bought a little iron working shop that at the time that he bought it, had four employees. And during the entire growing up period where I worked in my dad's shop, in a good year, it would be seven employees, and in a bad year, it would be four plus my mom and my two brothers and me. So many American businesses are just like this. They're one or two employees. There's somebody who even has another gig, maybe as an artist, and then they're moonlighting in some area where they can make just enough to afford to buy health insurance on the exchange, if we don't crush them with high premiums and if we don't make the paperwork burdens so substantial."

"The CRA that my colleagues are offering will be directly responsive to the needs of this very, very important group of American innovators and entrepreneurs, and that's why I so strongly support it and urge my colleagues to do the same," Kaine concluded.

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