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Lawmaker says Republican 'Reconciliation' bill cut health care for 15 million and offers no relief for families
Summary
A lawmaker told Congress the prior Republican 'Reconciliation' package cut health care for 15 million Americans, slashed food assistance, and added trillions to the national debt, and warned a follow-up bill provides no help for families and contains no safeguard against funding January 6 defendants.
A lawmaker criticized Republican-backed "Reconciliation" legislation in remarks to Congress, saying the earlier package cut health care for 15 million Americans, slashed food assistance and added "trillions of dollars" to the national debt.
The lawmaker said, "Reconciliation 1.0 ... became one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation to pass Congress in decades," and cited polling and the bill's specific effects. "The bill cut health care for 15 million Americans and raised health care costs for millions more," the lawmaker said, and added that it enacted "the largest cuts to food assistance in American history."
Why it matters: the speaker framed the package as shifting costs onto families while delivering large tax breaks to wealthy Americans. "It added trillions of dollars to the national debt, and all to help pay for the largest tax breaks for billionaires in our nation's history," the lawmaker said, arguing that the bill's provisions both raised costs and concentrated benefits at the top.
On the economy, the lawmaker criticized the administration's record, saying campaign promises to "lower prices on day one" had gone unmet and that tariff policy "have driven up costs for families and businesses." The speaker also blamed international military action for energy price increases, saying the conflict in Iran helped send gas prices "soaring, a more than 50 percent increase in just a matter of months." "Families are paying more at the pump," the lawmaker said.
Turning to the current proposal, the lawmaker said the Republican majority's "Reconciliation 2.0" contains "not one dime to help American families pay for the crushing costs that they bear." The speaker also raised a political and ethical objection: "the President who is continuing to openly say he wants to give billions of taxpayer money to January 6th insurrectionists," and added that there is "nothing in this bill to prevent that from happening."
The speech concluded with an appeal to lawmakers to produce legislation that "does nothing to lower costs, nothing to help families, nothing to stop Donald Trump from rewarding violent criminals who attacked our Capitol" and with the statement, "We deserve better." The transcript contains only the lawmaker's remarks and does not record any motion, vote or formal action tied to these comments.
