ImageDonald Trump and House Republicans promised to lower costs for American families. They lied.
They're planning to betray the middle class and raise costs on American families, all to pay for giveaways to Trump's billionaire donors.
On House Floor, Boyle Leads Fight Against Passage of Republican Betrayal
WASHINGTON, DC – At 3 AM this morning, Congressman Brendan F. Boyle (PA-02), Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee, spoke on the House floor ahead of a planned vote on the Republican budget bill. He warned that this bill would make it even harder for working families to afford their basic needs while cutting taxes for the wealthiest few.
In his remarks, Ranking Member Boyle highlighted new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office prepared at his request:
- CBO confirmed the Republican bill would take from the poorest Americans to hand even more tax breaks to the wealthiest.
- CBO also found the bill could trigger over $500 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare, under the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) law—cuts that many Republicans would be happy to see happen behind closed doors.
Remarks as delivered and video are below:
(Click for video of remarks as delivered)
Ranking Member Boyle's opening remarks as delivered:
Mr. Speaker, by my calculation I have now been up 43 of the last 45 hours, and I'm not quitting yet, and we are not quitting yet because the stakes are just too damn high. This is one of the most significant pieces of legislation we will ever vote on.
This bill will bring about the greatest loss of health care in American history. More than 6 million Americans who are currently on the Affordable Care Act will lose their health insurance if this Republican bill becomes law. More than 7 million Americans currently on Medicaid will lose their health care if this Republican bill becomes law.
In fact, in total, 13.7 million Americans will lose their health care according to the nonpartisan CBO. That's bad enough. But then late last night, we also got confirmation from CBO that something else is in this bill. Over $500 billion worth of cuts to Medicare. All told, given the cuts to the ACA, the cuts to Medicaid, the cuts to Medicare, the largest loss of healthcare in American history as a result of this bill. Not even during the Great Depression, did so many people lose their healthcare as will lose it in this bill.
And there are even more cuts beyond that, cuts to nutrition assistance programs, cuts to Head Start, cuts to other education programs. The list goes on and on. Why? To help pay for over $5 trillion worth of tax cuts, most of which that go to the top 1%. But here's the thing, as draconian as these cuts are, they actually don't even come close to paying for the size of the tax cuts.
So how is the rest subsidized? With more debt financing, so much so that we have finally seen for the first time ever, the Moody's credit agency on Friday downgrade the quality of the credit of the United States. Today we saw more market churn. Markets are worried.
Now, most ordinary Americans, most people I call as neighbors and friends back home in Northeast Philly, a very working-class and middle-class place, most people I know aren't paying attention to the credit agencies and what Wall Street is doing. But here's the thing, it will affect interest rates. In fact, it already is. Mortgage rates have gone back up over 7% and set to rise by more.
Not just mortgage rates, auto loan rates, the rate that your credit card company charges you. At a time of increasing unaffordability in America, this bill doesn't make the situation better. It makes it far, far worse. Mr. Speaker, this is not the kind of bill that is worthy of the Congress of the United States. This is class warfare. It makes the poor, poorer, the rich, richer, and the middle class left behind. And again, these aren't Democratic talking points.
These aren't coming from progressive organizations. Last night, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released the distribution tables in terms of who will get what from this tax bill. They found the bottom 10% will be 4% poorer in household wealth under this bill with most of the benefits going to the top 10% of Americans.
And of that top 10%, of course, it is the top 1% that will get the most benefit of all. Robbing the poor to reward the rich. It is wrong. It is bad economics, and it is, as one Republican senator called it "morally wrong."
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