[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 76 (Wednesday, May 7, 2025)]
[House]
[Page H1887]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    ADVOCATING AGAINST MEDICAID CUTS

  (Mr. Auchincloss of Massachusetts was recognized to address the House 
for 5 minutes.)
  Mr. AUCHINCLOSS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to advocate against the 
funding cuts to the Medicaid program that have been proposed for 
consideration during the budget reconciliation process.
  Specifically, the Energy and Commerce Committee, of which I am a 
member, has been tasked with cutting $880 billion of Federal spending 
across the healthcare programs it oversees, a vast majority of which 
supports Medicaid.
  Cutting this program will be used in service of tax cuts for people 
who don't need tax cuts and will be devastating to children and 
families who do need the healthcare.

                              {time}  1045

  Mr. Speaker, as we discuss cuts to this program, we must not forget 
the people behind these budgetary numbers. As such, I will highlight 
one Massachusetts family today. I will be reading a poem entitled, 
``The Mathematics of Mercy.'' It was written by Betsy Johnson. Betsy is 
an autism educator with the ARC of Massachusetts and a mother of two 
young adult children with autism and other intellectual disabilities. 
They rely on Medicaid.
  She shared this poem with me to highlight the importance of Medicaid 
with her family and all families who care for their loved ones with 
disabilities. It speaks more powerfully than any amount of budgetary 
debate.

     ``The Mathematics of Mercy'':
     A direct care worker holds
     Someone's universe for $16 an hour,
     Lifts world, bathes dignity back into being
     Her hands trembling now
     As she reads the letter
     Saying her client's hours are cut,
     Knowing some bodies can't survive
     On spreadsheet logic.
     They speak of cuts in marble rooms,
     Voices that have never whispered,
     ``Your therapy is never medically necessary''
     To a nonverbal child
     Who just learned to make sounds
     Like morning birds.
     In living rooms turned sacred spaces,
     Therapists pack up their tools of possibility--
     Weighted vests, sensory brushes,
     Piece of someone's future
     Now deemed too expensive
     By men who've never seen
     How a body learns to trust itself
     One careful touch at a time.
     Listen to power chairs going still,
     To screens falling dark in throats
     That borrow them for voice,
     To support workers saying goodbye
     To people who stopped being clients
     Somewhere between the first smile
     And the last hug,
     While offshore accounts grow fat
     On the mathematics of suffering.
     This is how a nation bleeds:
     Not on battlefields but in group homes,
     Not from enemy fire but from funding gaps,
     Where independence becomes too expensive,
     Where institution beds cost less
     Than community care.
     In the halls of power,
     They call this fiscal responsibility
     As if responsibility means
     Telling a mother her daughter
     Can no longer see the therapist
     Who taught her how to speak,
     As if America means
     Pricing dignity like a luxury good.
     Every denial letter bears
     A signature of someone
     Who has never watched a child
     Take their first steps at 12,
     Never seen the light in eyes
     When words finally come,
     Never felt the weight
     Of a family's hopes
     Balanced against
     The coldness of cost.
     Yet in these rooms where care persists,
     Where love defies their calculations,
     We piece together what they tear apart
     Like a quilt of borrowed time,
     With midnight shifts and morning prayers,
     Hands that hold when budgets say let go.
     Here, in this web of grace we weave,
     Because what flows through us is stronger
     Than their ledgers and our stubborn refusal
     To let spreadsheets tell us what a life is worth.

  Again, this comes from Betsy Johnson, an autism educator with the ARC 
of Massachusetts.

                          ____________________