On House Floor, Boyle Slams Trump’s Plan to Kick 17 Million Off Their Health Care

WASHINGTON, DC — While leading the House floor debate at 3:30 AM, Congressman Brendan F. Boyle (PA-02), Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee, delivered remarks condemning the Republican plot to kick 17 million people off their health care in order to fund massive tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. 

Background:

• A fact sheet on the Republican reconciliation bill can be found here.
• State and district data on the impacts of this legislation can be found here.
• A fact sheet on the over $500 billion in Medicare cuts triggered by this bill can be found here. 

Remarks as delivered and video are below:

(Click for video of remarks as delivered)

Ranking Member Boyle's remarks as delivered:

 Well, here we are again. Yogi Berra once said, "it's deja vu all over again." Debating this bill in the middle of the night, boy, this crowd must love prime time in Guam. This has been the worst process of the worst bill I have ever seen during my decade in Congress.

This is not what our founders intended - far from it. And while the process stinks, the substance is even worse. The bill still kicks 17 million Americans off their health care. Record cuts to Medicaid, record cuts to the Affordable Care Act, record cuts to Medicare. But that's not all - four and a half million kicked off nutrition assistance, mostly seniors and children.

Why? To help subsidize massive tax cuts that mostly go to the top 1 percent. Of course, all of those cuts, over one and a half trillion's worth, don't come close to paying for the more than $5 trillion worth of tax cuts. So who pays the remainder? Our national credit card. So here we are actually voting, not just for the biggest loss of health care in American history, but the biggest increase in our national debt in American history.

I have no idea what in the world the crowd that was holding out got for holding out. Does anyone know? It is a complete mystery to me and to the American people, but one thing is clear. There is one group making out as a result of this bill - the billionaire class.

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