Lawmaker warns Republican tax bill would cut health care for millions, cites CBO and Moody's concerns
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Summary
In a floor speech, Speaker 1 warned the Republican tax bill would strip health coverage from roughly 13.7 million people, citing CBO distribution estimates and more than $500 billion in Medicare cuts, and pointed to a recent Moody's downgrade and rising mortgage rates as related risks.
Speaker 1, Speaker, told the chamber that a pending Republican tax bill would trigger large-scale losses of health coverage and widen economic inequality. "This bill will bring about the greatest loss of health care in American history," Speaker 1 said, citing nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates and other economic indicators.
The warning centered on CBO figures that Speaker 1 summarized during the address: more than 6,000,000 Affordable Care Act enrollees and more than 7,000,000 Medicaid recipients would lose health coverage, a combined total the speaker said was "13,700,000 Americans" according to the CBO. The speaker also asserted the bill contains "over 500,000,000,000 worth of cuts to Medicare."
Why it matters: Those program cuts, the speaker said, are paired with roughly $5,000,000,000,000 in tax cuts largely benefiting the top 1% of earners. Speaker 1 listed additional reductions to nutrition assistance, Head Start and other education programs as part of the offsets. The speech framed the package as shifting costs onto lower- and middle-income households while concentrating benefits at the top.
Economic context cited in the speech included a recent credit-rating action and market moves. Speaker 1 said Moody's downgraded U.S. credit quality and said markets have shown "churn," a point the speaker linked to higher borrowing costs. "Mortgage rates have gone back up over 7% and set to rise by more," Speaker 1 said, adding that auto-loan and credit-card rates are also affected.
Speaker 1 characterized the bill as "class warfare," saying it "makes the poor, poorer, the rich, richer, and the middle class left behind." The speaker further cited CBO distribution tables the previous night showing the bottom 10% of households would be about 4% poorer under the bill while most benefits accrue to the top 10%, particularly the top 1%.
The transcript excerpt contains no record of a motion, amendment, or formal vote on the measure. The remarks close with a denunciation of the bill as "wrong" and "bad economics," and with the speaker repeating an earlier characterization by a Republican colleague that the measure is "morally wrong." The record provided ends with that condemnation and does not show subsequent action or a vote in this excerpt.