Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, on healthcare, Donald Trump and his so-called Big Beautiful Bill is ugly to its very core. Behind the smoke and mirrors lies a cruel and draconian truth: tax breaks for the ultrawealthy, paid for by gutting healthcare for millions of Americans.
Over the past few days, Donald Trump has tried to sell this bill to Republican Senators with a new lie. He has been telling Republican Senators and the American people that no one will lose coverage; that no benefits will be slashed; that the bill won’t harm recipients. Let’s call it what it is: a lie. People will lose coverage. Millions will. Donald Trump is lying to the American people when he says no one will lose coverage under this ugly bill. There is no way for Republicans to seek the cuts they want without removing millions of people off their healthcare in one way or another.
I warn my Republican colleagues: Do not buy Donald Trump’s snake oil sales pitch.
Republicans want to cut out waste, fraud, and abuse. Good. We will help them do it. This bill certainly isn’t that.
Make no mistake, this Big Beautiful Bill is, in reality, repeal and replace by another name. This is a healthcare bill to its core.
To cut through their lies, let’s talk facts. Fact: 20 million Americans will see their healthcare costs go up. Fact: 14 million Americans, including children and seniors, will lose their coverage entirely. Fact: Adult Medicaid recipients--the vast majority, the overwhelming majority--already work. Many of them will be thrown off coverage anyway. Fact: This bill has millions losing healthcare.
If Donald Trump wants to talk fraud, if Republicans want to talk fraud, fine. The fraud we actually see in Medicaid isn’t coming from families making ends meet; it is coming from the top--from large providers, unscrupulous bigwigs. The reality is that most fraud in Medicaid happens not with individual enrollees but at the level of healthcare providers--not all of them, not most of them, but a handful who do fraud. It is more than a handful, but it is not all of them at all.
But Donald Trump is doing nothing to hold them accountable. Just the opposite. The other day, he pardoned a nursing home executive who skimmed $10 million from the paychecks of nurses, doctors, and other employees. Hear that, folks? Donald Trump, who says he wants to reduce fraud, just pardoned a nursing home executive who skimmed $10 million from the paychecks of his employees.
The reality is simple: There is not enough fraud in Medicaid and ACA to make Republicans’ math work. They know it. Republicans may not want to admit it publicly, but they know that, under their current proposal, millions of Americans, including millions who are employed, who have families will lose their healthcare coverage.
Republicans want to shorten the enrollment period. They want to bury families in redtape. They want to drown States in new administrative hurdles. The Republicans’ strategy, in large part, is to make it so difficult for people to sign up for healthcare and so easy to fall through the cracks that tens of millions of Americans will simply lose coverage, and it would be by design. Just ask Vought. Just look at 2025. Senate Republicans can make jokes all they want that we are going to die anyway, but for many working-class Americans, healthcare is the difference between life and death.
Let me be clear: Democrats are ready. When Republicans finally release the full text of their so-called Big Beautiful Bill, the American people will see the truth. They will see how ugly it is, and we will fight it with facts, with urgency, and with the voices of millions of Americans who deserve better than this cruel, cynical attack on their healthcare and on their dignity.
Random excerpts from the House
Eighty years ago in Germany, Jews were burned in ovens for being Jews, and on Sunday, as I sat at home with my children watching TV, we saw that here in the United States, in 2025, Jews are being burned again.
You see, Mr. Speaker, it feels like open hunting season on Jewish Americans. I wear a kippah not because I am a proud and observant Jew. I am not all that observant. I wear it out of respect for all the Jews around America who do not feel safe wearing theirs today. That is because, by wearing it, they feel they literally have a target on their heads.
We have heard for 18 months that the intifada should be globalized. We have heard ``resistance by any means necessary.‘’ On Sunday, and again 2 weeks ago, we saw what that looked like.
In this country, we have a hard decision to make. We have to make a decision about whether we are going to continue to be afraid or whether we are going to call evil by its name.
— Rep. Anthony D. Fine (R-FL-1)
Mr. Speaker, today, June 3, Congress reconvenes after a 12-day break. On May 22, the last time we were here, this Chamber was involved in a 2-day marathon. H.R.1, the misnamed one big, beautiful bill, was jammed through in the dead of the night, as it was being written in real time, by a vote of 215 to 214. During my time home, I held two townhalls. One was up in Tolland, Connecticut, near the border of Massachusetts. The other was down along the shoreline in Madison, Connecticut. Both townhalls were well-attended.
Last night in Madison, it was standing room only. People were bursting with questions about how a bill that can change the tax code for the next 10 years, that can intervene in terms of our healthcare system, in terms of taking away people’s health coverage, can happen with no transparency and no public input.
As I said, it was being written in the dead of the night prior to the vote on May 22. This is what we know now as the dust has settled in terms of what the impact of this bill is.
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