Al Franken: “Thank you, Mr. President. I rise to talk about the effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Before I begin…”

“Thank you, Mr. President. I rise to talk about the effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Before I begin, I thank Senator Hirono for sharing her story and for leading us all here in the discussion tonight. I thank the Presiding Officer who has been listening, and I appreciate that. I really do. In recent days, we have finally gotten to see the plan that 13 Republican Senators have been working on in secret and behind closed doors. I really thought the Senate bill would be better. I thought it would be better than the House version that was passed. Even Senator Burr said of the House bill that it was ``dead on arrival'' in the Senate, but, unfortunately, the Senate plan is just as bad. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office announced just today that, under the Senate plan, 22 million more Americans would be uninsured. That has consequences. Perhaps worst of all--and partly because this causes the reduction in the number of Americans who would be covered--the bill ends the Medicaid expansion and cuts the funding for the Medicaid Program by nearly $800 billion--a program that has been a vital part of our social fabric since 1965. This bill--and I do not like to say this--is mean. The President said that of the House bill. I do not like to characterize something that way, but it is mean and would have far-reaching effects for millions of Americans across the country. This past weekend, I hosted a healthcare forum in Burnsville, MN.…”