Chris Van Hollen: “like many of our colleagues during the Fourth of July break, I spent much of my time crisscrossing the State of…”

“like many of our colleagues during the Fourth of July break, I spent much of my time crisscrossing the State of Maryland. On the Fourth of July, I attended many parades. The very first parade of that day was in a part of Maryland outside of Baltimore City, called Dundalk, MD, where Donald Trump had done very well in the past election. What I found during that parade was a lot of people there who were still supportive of President Trump but not one person at that parade who was in favor of TrumpCare or the Senate Republican so-called healthcare bill--not one. I was listening to the Senator from Vermont about the most recent polling. The polling I had seen previously had shown 17 percent of the American people in favor of this, which was very low. I am not surprised to hear it is even lower now at 12 percent because my own personal experience in these places in Maryland that had been supportive of Donald Trump, and in many ways still are, were that they were not in favor of this healthcare bill. In many ways, they had felt betrayed by it. After all, during the last campaign, Donald Trump said he wasn't going to cut Medicaid, and yet the bill before us has dramatic cuts to Medicaid. In fact, the Senate bill has even deeper cuts to Medicaid over time than the House bill. We all remember the House bill. President Trump had a great celebration in the Rose Garden in public, but behind closed doors he called it mean.…”