On the recordApril 8, 2025
Mr. Speaker, in this Chamber, as early as today, we may be passing legislation that is explicitly designed to maintain historically low tax rates on the Nation's wealthiest people. The richest people in America will be served by this institution so that they can pay the lowest tax amounts possible. The corporations in this country must have their record-low tax rates maintained. The problem is this comes with a cost, and that cost will be paid, as the Republicans have laid it out for us to see, by the Medicaid program and by the addition of trillions of dollars to the United States debt. Let's talk for a second about Medicaid because it serves about 80 million Americans. Not all Americans have experience with it, but an awful lot do. We are told, and the fantasy is, that the money can be saved by identifying waste, fraud, and abuse. Make no mistake, that is a fantasy. If you are rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, you hire more people, investigators, and auditors to go after it. We are doing the exact opposite. Elon Musk and DOGE are firing the people who go after waste, fraud, and abuse. It turns out that people don't wear signs around their necks saying: ``I am committing waste, fraud, and abuse.'' No, it is hard to identify this stuff. It exists, but it does not exist in any conceivable number that the Republicans are talking about cutting out of the Medicaid program. That number is almost $100 billion a year, $100 billion out of roughly $600 billion in spending.…





