[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 120 (Monday, July 14, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4327-S4329]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL ACT
Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, 2 weeks ago, Republicans passed one of
the most unpopular bills in the history of the country--one of the most
unpopular bills in the history of the country. Now that it is law, we
don't have to imagine anymore what might happen; we know for sure what
is going to happen to tens of millions of people all across the
country.
I want to focus on five things that are going to happen--five things
that are going to happen because we no longer have to talk about a
House version or a Senate version or what the President says he wants
or if someone says ``If I don't get this, I am going to vote no''; now
we have a law. We have public law, Federal law.
The first thing that is going to happen is 17 million Americans,
including 9 million people on Medicaid, will lose healthcare coverage
in about 18 months' time. To keep their coverage, people will have to
complete hours and hours of paperwork just to prove they are working.
That is in spite of the fact that the number of nondisabled adults on
Medicaid who don't work is very low--about 8 percent.
How do these work requirements actually function? Well, in Arkansas,
which is one of the two States that tried this and then pulled it back
because it was a failure, the reporting portal was only open during the
day and closed between the hours of 9 p.m. and 7 a.m.
Let's say you work long hours as a truckdriver. If you are trying to
log on at night to fill out your forms, you are out of luck. Let's say
something unfortunate happens to you. Let's say you get in a car
accident or have a bad case of the flu. Maybe you are not hospitalized,
but you are incapacitated, at least temporarily. If you missed the
reporting window, you might lose the coverage.
What is preposterous about these Medicaid work requirements is that
in order to establish that you are either working or seeking work, you
have to fill out a form. If you get sick and are bedridden and can't
fill out the form, they say: Don't worry, there is an exception for a
situation like that.
Guess how you apply for the exception. By filling out another form.
There are only a couple million people on Medicaid who even fit the
description of someone who is nondisabled and on Medicaid. Yet the
actual official projections, which is to say the way they save the
money, is they are projecting that many, many millions of people are
going to get kicked off of Medicaid even though they are eligible.
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I know I am a Democrat, and I wanted this bill to fail, and I want to
tell you why this is a failure of a bill, but that is literally in
their projections. Without those projections, they don't have enough
revenue for the biggest tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the
history of the planet.
No. 2, hundreds of rural hospitals and nursing homes will close
without enough funding to continue operating. More people are going to
get sick because of this law, but we are going to have fewer hospitals
and doctors to take care of them. Why? Because Medicaid is a big
revenue stream for really all hospitals but especially rural hospitals.
It can be up to about half of the payer mix.
What is a payer mix? It just means you might get paid by private
insurance 30 percent, you might get paid by Medicaid 45 percent, you
might have a little VA, and you might have a little private pay; it
adds up to 100 percent. As you look at your revenue picture, 40, 50--
sometimes even more--percent of that money comes from Medicaid. If
there is a huge $1 trillion nationwide reduction in Medicaid money,
that money is reduced money for rural hospitals, and rural hospitals
will definitely close--not all of them but many of them.
So even if you are not on Medicaid, if you live in a place where
there is a rural hospital and that is the flagship hospital for a small
town, that might not be available to you. You might have to drive 2 or
3 hours for care, even emergency care.
No. 3, starting next year, tens of millions of people are going to
pay hundreds of dollars a month more for health insurance.
This is what, I think, we should linger on because now that the fight
over ObamaCare is sort of in the rearview mirror, people just think
they get onto the ACA portal; they sign up for their healthcare; and
they pay what they pay, right? Like, Oh, I am on a family plan. I want
``this'' level of deductible. Then it spits out how much you are going
to pay every month. What tens of millions of people don't actually know
is that those rates on the exchange are subsidized, and without those
subsidies, we are going to go back to the bad old days of pre-
ObamaCare, when people would pay absurd amounts of money for their
healthcare insurance even if they are employed, even if they do have
insurance.
What is, I think, underrated, both politically and on policy, is all
of those rates get set in the next couple of months because, in order
to start paying and in order to start enrolling, you have got to notify
people: Hey, your thing that was $289 a month now is $789 a month. So
sometime in the fall--it depends on the State, in October, November,
and some people in December--people are going to get a letter, saying:
If you want to stay on the same healthcare plan, here is your new
price. And those new prices are going to be astronomical.
Now, we do have a disagreement between the parties. I think there are
a lot of people who just don't like the public subsidy of healthcare
insurance premiums. I am sure the Presiding Officer has her
reservations about that kind of thing. It is about the size and the
scope of government, but there is a factual aspect to this which is,
whatever one's governing philosophy is and whatever one thought about
the Affordable Care Act, the plain fact of the matter is, people are
going to get letters from their insurance carriers with astronomical
increases that they will not be able to pay.
No. 4, 5 million people are either going to lose some or all of their
nutritional assistance starting next year.
You know, this trope is almost as old as I am--like some lazy person
on food stamps just collecting food stamps, loving that life, going to
the store, buying fancy stuff. It is $6 a day. The average nutritional
assistance amount per person per day is 6 bucks. I don't know if you
know this, but we have subsidized food in the U.S. Senate, not because
the government is paying for it but because all of the restaurants that
operate here don't have to pay lease rent so it is a little bit cheaper
than you would normally get. I can't get anything for 6 bucks
downstairs in the Dirksen cafeteria, not that would feed me.
Six dollars a day is the average amount, and what the Republicans
decided to do to generate savings, to find savings, is to cut
nutritional assistance. Why? Because they needed to pay for the biggest
tax cut in American history for the wealthiest people and corporations
that has ever existed. It would be one thing if people were getting 75
bucks a day for food. It would be one thing if they were getting 25
bucks a day for food, but they are getting 6 bucks, and 5 million
people will now have an enormously difficult time trying to figure out
just how to survive the day--and I mean that quite literally, survive
the day--to find the calories within their $6 or $8 or $12 budget.
Finally, people are going to pay hundreds of dollars more per year in
electricity because this bill throttles the cheapest and most abundant
form of energy in wind and solar. And this is where you have got to
stay with me for a moment.
I am very passionate about climate action. I think it is a planetary
emergency. I think it is a moral obligation that we take care of our
planet so it can sustain us for generations to come. But even if you
don't care about that, the only energy that is ready to come online
right now is solar energy--some wind energy but mostly solar energy.
Why? Because nuclear, frankly, takes at least 10 years to permit and
site, and, of course, anytime anyone wants to do any nuclear power
generation, everybody in whatever neighborhood or State or county that
is in tries to stop it. You don't just have regulatory risk; you have
project risk, so 10 years is an optimistic scenario. I am a big
believer in nuclear energy, but 10 years is the most realistic scenario
to get a bunch of nuclear energy online. Likewise, geothermal is,
maybe, 5 to 8 years in the most optimistic scenario. Again, I love
geothermal energy. I think it is an untapped resource across the United
States of America.
We have about a 6-year gap before any of those other technologies are
ready. So a lot of fossil advocates go: Well, why don't we do more gas?
There is a backlog of combined-cycle gas turbines, and that can't just
be fixed by saying: ``I will take more.'' Everybody wants more. There
is a backlog. You cannot get gas generation online in the next 5 years.
So what does that mean? It means, over the next 5 years, solar is
the stuff that is instantly pluggable into the grid, supercheap, not
terribly controversial except for in this Chamber, and ready to power
the AI revolution and whatever other load needs we have.
But this bill kind of punitively, kind of ideologically decides: No,
we are not for ``all of the above''; you know that thing we said about
whatever is cheap and plentiful and available every time we were trying
to prevent clean energy from coming on the grid? Do you remember that
thing we used to say? Now, really, what we meant is, we quite hate
solar energy, particularly. We hate solar energy. Again, I think that
is preposterous from a planetary standpoint, but even if there were no
planetary crisis, this is the energy that is available to us, and we
are about to face energy shortages.
The reason, for instance, Texas, of all places, has not had blackouts
and brownouts is because solar can absorb wind; the Sun is high. It is
108 degrees, and everybody is pumping their air-conditioners. That also
happens to be the point in time and the point of the day when all of
the solar farms are running at full capacity, and they can power the
grid.
So solar energy isn't something from 17 years ago when you said, you
know, sometimes the Sun is shining and sometimes it is not and it is
intermittent and the batteries aren't there. All of that is in the
rearview mirror. All of the technical issues--not all of them. Ninety
percent of the technical issues related to solar energy have been
resolved.
That is the scariest thing for the fossil energy people. Do you know
why? Because they can't argue that this isn't economically smarter;
they just have to argue that it is woke or something, like woke
electrons. Who cares where the electrons come from? If they are cheap
and plentiful, we should all be for them.
So this bill is going to create shortages which will drive up the
prices and, in some places, reduce power quality. What does ``power
quality'' mean? It means we are going to have blackouts and brownouts
across the country.
To do any of these things in the bill would be bad, but to do all of
it--all of
[[Page S4329]]
it--in order to pay for the biggest wealth transfer from the poor to
the rich in history is morally and economically bankrupt. Nobody asked
for any of this. Trump voters were not demanding any of this. Nobody
was asking to lose their healthcare or not be able to feed their kids
or to pay more to keep the lights on at home, but they raced to do it
anyway, knowing full well how devastating it would be for the country
and for their own home States.
One final point: We are not going to stop talking about this. We are
going to talk about this until it is repealed. We are going to talk
about this when the rates go up for your electricity. We are going to
talk about this when kids are thrown off their nutritional assistance.
We are going to talk about this when rural hospitals close. We are
going to talk about this when your insurance coverage rates go up.
We are not going to stop talking about this because this document
which was enacted into law is a perfect encapsulation of the difference
between the political parties. My party is flawed--obviously, my party
is flawed--but I have never seen my party propose a bill that
transferred so much money from the poor to the rich, and I have never
seen my party propose a bill that raises the price of electricity, that
raises the price of food, and that raises the price of healthcare. So
we are going to talk about this today, tomorrow, and for the next 18
months until this thing is repealed from the Federal lawbooks.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
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