On House Floor, Boyle Highlights Republican Cuts to Health Care to Fund Giveaways for Billionaires

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Congressman Brendan F. Boyle (PA-02), Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee, addressed the House floor before the vote to pass Republicans’ extreme budget resolution. He highlighted to his Republican colleagues the pain they are inflicting on tens of millions of Americans — by cutting Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act — to fund massive giveaways to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.

Remarks as delivered and video are below:

Click for video of remarks as delivered.

Ranking Member Boyle’s full closing remarks as delivered:

Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield myself the balance of my time. First, let me say before my closing, my good friend and chair of the Budget Committee-- and we've worked closely together in opposition a lot of the time, but actually in agreement some of the time with some real achievements, though not today – he said something that really interests me, that there's this GAO report showing five trillion dollars of fraud.

Well, I certainly would be interested in seeing that report. The size of the entire budget every year is only six and a half trillion. So how in the world five trillion out of six and a half trillion is really fraud? I find that a little hard to believe. Now, Mr. Chairman, we're at a pivotal moment. I said at the beginning of this debate some two and a half hours ago that this budget resolution represents the Republican betrayal of the middle class. For the last two and a half hours, you have heard speaker after speaker on my side expose exactly why that is so. First and foremost, and I think most crucially, the 880 billion dollars in cuts to Medicaid-- the largest cuts in American history to Medicaid. Why is that important?

Seventy-two million Americans rely on Medicaid. Another 20 million rely and get their health care through the Affordable Care Act. They are also at risk. We have heard further that while those are the biggest cuts, there are even more. Hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to nutrition assistance, school lunch programs, Pell Grants, Head Starts, and the list goes on and on.

And why? All to deliver four and a half trillion dollars of tax cuts to the richest one percent of Americans. And let's not forget the fact that in order to cover the rest of the cost of those tax cuts, they are increasing the debt limit by four trillion dollars. They like to talk about debt and how horrible it is, but this piece of legislation will make our debt situation far worse.

This is the Republican betrayal of the middle class. Day after day, in my home state of Pennsylvania, you had candidates from both sides talking about how the number one priority should be to lower costs for Americans. The President made that promise. He said he would do it on day one. Well, here we are, more than a month in.

Not one executive order. Not one bill to lower costs for the American people. Instead, we have this bill to take money from the middle class and give it to those who need it the least. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to lead the opposition to this Republican betrayal of the middle class. I urge every member of this House to vote no.

With that, I yield back.

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