Chris Coons: “I want to speak for a few minutes on the floor to answer the calls I am getting into my office, the texts and the emails…”

“I want to speak for a few minutes on the floor to answer the calls I am getting into my office, the texts and the emails I am getting with people asking: What is going on? What is happening in the U.S. Senate? They can't keep track of what it is we have moved to. We don't know either. We are here probably all night waiting for the majority to finally produce the bill that they will use to attempt to repeal and maybe replace--or not--the Affordable Care Act. All we know is, every single proposal that has been brought forward in recent days has two features: It reduces coverage, and it raises costs. It may be that 16 million Americans will lose healthcare coverage. It might be 20 million, might be 32 million. Those are different scores for different proposed bills. It may raise costs by 15 percent, 20 percent, or 30 percent. Sometime later tonight, we will see the final bill presented on this floor, and hopefully we will get some score so we know what we are voting on before we finally get there, but what is so scary to families I am hearing from, is that after 7 months of majority rule, where the Republican Party controls the Senate, House, and White House, we don't have a finished bill for us to debate tonight in detail, and we don't know yet exactly what we will vote on later tonight. We just know a simple theme--every proposal that has been brought forward when scored by the CBO, the independent scorekeeper, offers less coverage and higher costs.…”