On the recordDecember 1, 2015
as the ranking member of the Budget Committee, I rise in strong opposition to the budget reconciliation bill we are debating today. In fact, this bill should tell every American just how far removed the Republican leadership here in Congress is from the realities of American life and the needs of the American people. At a time when the United States is the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all people; when 29 million Americans today have no health insurance and even more are underinsured, with high deductibles and high copayments; when we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs and when one out of five Americans is unable to fill the prescriptions written by their doctors because drug prices are so high, what this legislation does is move us in exactly the wrong direction. It would throw more than 17 million Americans off of health insurance by gutting the Affordable Care Act. So we have a health care crisis, and this bill makes the crisis much worse. Every other major country on Earth guarantees health care for all of their people as a right, but this bill would add 17 million more Americans to the ranks of the uninsured, creating a situation in which we would have 46 million Americans without any health insurance at all. I think any sensible person would ask an obvious question: What happens to people who lose their health insurance?…
