Michael Bennet: “the hour is late. I want to thank the Presiding Officer for being here. I am glad to be here with my colleague from New…”

“the hour is late. I want to thank the Presiding Officer for being here. I am glad to be here with my colleague from New Hampshire and my neighbor from New Mexico. I want to thank the floor staff that is here tonight. And I would like to suggest--but it is not the purpose of my speech--that the next time Senators make the suggestion that the floor staff should spend the entire night reading a bill here, that the Senators actually read that bill instead of imposing that on the staff that is here. I think that would be a just thing for us to do and the appropriate and proper thing for us to do. Madam President, the last time that we were headed down this road, which was when Republicans were passing President Trump's 2017 deficit-exploding tax cut, it didn't take a mathematical genius to figure out what was about to happen. I told the Senate at that time that, as our debt grows, we will spend billions more not on schools, roads, and innovation but on interest costs. Worse, we were about to blow another hole in the debt without really helping the middle class, and 8 years ago, I said: On top of that, we know that, when deficits swell, as they surely will, cuts to Medicaid and Medicare will be sure to follow, further burdening working families struggling to make ends meet. Well, here we are. That is exactly the story of this bill. Utterly predictable is this bill which massively increases our deficit when our children can least afford it.”