House lawmaker criticizes late-night debate, says bill would cut Medicaid and Medicare

An unidentified lawmaker on the House floor criticized a late-night debate over a pending bill, saying the measure would sharply reduce federal health and social programs to finance tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. "This is not a debate that should have been happening in the middle of the night," the speaker said, arguing the bill is "a bill for billionaires."

The speaker said the bill would cause at least 13,700,000 Americans to lose health insurance because of "devastating cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act," and asserted the measure would cut about $1,000,000,000,000 from Medicare. The remarks also listed reductions to nutrition programs, food assistance, Head Start and education programs. "To subsidize tax cuts for the top 1%," the speaker said, "the bottom 10% ... will be 4% worse off."

The speaker cited analyses from several organizations, saying the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bipartisan Committee for Responsible Federal Budget and the Cato Institute, among others, "have actually united the right, the center, and the left" in concluding the bill would add trillions to the national debt. The speaker framed the vote as a consequential decision for the chamber and urged colleagues to oppose the measure, concluding, "hell no to this bill," then yielding back.

The transcript records no formal motion or vote in these segments. The remarks attributed here are those of an unnamed speaker identified in the transcript only as "Speaker 1." The numbers and institutional citations above reflect the claims made by that speaker during the remarks; the transcript does not record an on-the-record vote or other formal action in the provided segments.