Heidi Alexander: “in respecting Senator Cornyn's prerogative, I will stop when he comes to the floor. I believe that Senator Murray has…”

“in respecting Senator Cornyn's prerogative, I will stop when he comes to the floor. I believe that Senator Murray has come to the floor and has reported that the Congressional Budget Office has just finished an evaluation of the Alexander-Murray proposal to the U.S. Senate that would be for the purpose of reducing premiums and avoiding chaos in the individual insurance markets during the years 2018 and 2019. The Senator from New Hampshire is a strong sponsor of that legislation. It is unusual, in fact, that it has 12 Republican Senators and 12 Democratic Senators. Not many pieces of legislation come to the floor with that support. The reason we accelerated work on it was that President Trump called me and asked me to work with Senator Murray to try to develop such a proposal. So now it is being considered by the President, by the House of Representatives, and by other Members of this body. An important piece of information, as Senator Murray has said, is what the Congressional Budget Office writes about the impact of our proposal on the Federal taxpayers and on the consumers across the country. President Trump has been very clear on one thing he wants, which is that we do not bail out insurance companies if, in 2018, we pay cost- sharing payment reductions, which are payments to pay for deductibles and copays for low-income Americans. I 100 percent agree with President Trump on that, and Senator Murray 100 percent agrees with President Trump on that.…”