Brendan Boyle

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, the reality is, this bill, not according to our numbers, according to independent, certified, nonpartisan authority on this matter, verified at least 13.7 million Americans will lose their health insurance. Do you know why they want to talk about every subject under the Sun other than this? Because they know it is going to have devastating consequences for the American people, and it will have devastating consequences for them next November. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. McGarvey), a distinguished member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Amo), a distinguished member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, this bill will kick 494,000 people in Georgia off their health insurance. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Larsen), the distinguished ranking member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin), the distinguished ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, one challenge with doing this massive bill literally in the middle of the night--as I look up, if I am reading that correctly, it is 3:45 a.m. right now--there are all sorts of provisions that we are discovering in this massive piece of legislation being rushed through in the dead of the night. I want to call out just one deeply troubling provision hidden in this bill, a provision that blocks States from regulating artificial intelligence for the next 10 years. AI has the potential to be transformative, but only if it is developed and used in a safe, responsible way. That requires strong guardrails. This bill does the opposite. The fact this was quietly tucked into this budget bill is reckless and wrong. It shows exactly who this bill was written for--not working families, but powerful special interests. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano), the ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I would remind my friend from the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that this bill will kick 404,000 people in our State off their health insurance. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Ruiz), a distinguished member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I would remind the gentleman this bill will kick 220,000 people in South Carolina off their health insurance. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Mrs. Trahan), a distinguished member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I would remind the gentleman this bill will kick 370,000 people in Michigan off their health insurance. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Olszewski), a distinguished member of the Small Business Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Virginia (Ms. McClellan), a distinguished member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Kamlager-Dove), who is a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, perhaps it is because it is now past 4 a.m., but I feel like I have entered the twilight zone. We have 13.7 million Americans, at least, who are going to lose their health insurance because of this bill, another $500 million worth of cuts to Medicare on top of that, and what is one of their last speakers talking about? A tax cut if you buy silencers, Mr. Speaker. This is bizarre. The reality is millions and millions of Americans are going to lose their health coverage all to help subsidize tax cuts for billionaires, oh, yes, and also tax cuts for those who buy gun silencers. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Riley), who is a distinguished member of the Agriculture Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, it has been a long debate. I think we started, I don't know, 48 hours ago or whatever it is by now. However, make no mistake about it. This is not a debate that should have been happening in the middle of the night. It shouldn't have happened in the middle of the night last night in the Rules Community, and it shouldn't be happening in the middle of the night tonight. Frankly, if I had a bill that I was proud of, I would want to put it on when people are paying most attention. I can understand, however, why there are some folks on the other side who might want folks to not quite pay attention to what is in this bill. Mr. Speaker, you have heard speaker after speaker on this side, however, expose the damage that this bill for billionaires will do: 13.6 million Americans at least would lose their health insurance because of devastating cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Another one-half trillion dollars more will be cut in Medicare. There are all sorts of cuts to nutrition programs and food assistance, education programs and Head Start. The list goes on and on. Why? It is to subsidize tax cuts for the top 1 percent. For the bottom 10 percent, we learned in the last 24 hours they won't even get a little bit of a tax cut. In fact, when all of the components of this bill are factored in, they will be 4 percent worse off than they were before. Oh, by the way, for the side that always talks about deficit and debt, they really care about the national debt when there is a Democrat in the White House, but then when there is a Republican in the White House, they go about adding more to it. Don't take my word for it, Mr. Speaker. The nonpartisan CBO shows, the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget shows, the right-of-center Cato Institute shows, and left-of-center groups show-- they have actually united the right, the center, and the left who are all in agreement that this bill adds trillions more to our national debt. We can do better. As I said in the very beginning, this is one of the most important votes we will ever cast in this Chamber. I am proud to stand here on behalf of this side of the aisle and say: Hell no to this bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding time to discuss our proposal. Late Sunday night, the House Budget Committee, on which I serve as ranking member, passed out, with only Republican votes, a draconian tax bill that cuts almost 14 million Americans off their healthcare and ensures a few million more lose their food assistance. You might ask yourself why. The reason is, in order to help pay for tax cuts for billionaires. Interestingly, we were originally supposed to pass this on Friday, but on Friday, around lunchtime, enough hard-line conservative members on the Budget Committee withheld their votes and voted ``no,'' not because they objected to 14 million Americans losing their healthcare, not because they objected to millions more losing their food assistance, but because they looked at those numbers and said: Well, that is a good start. We want those numbers to go up. We want even more people to lose their healthcare and more people to lose their food assistance. The vote went down Friday. We come back Sunday night, and suddenly the vote is called again. I raised the question as a parliamentary inquiry. I simply asked: What has changed? What deals have been made? The American people deserve to know. We, as Members, on both sides of the aisle, deserve to know before casting our votes. I was assured that nothing had changed. There were no agreements made. Then the very next Republican speaker, who is one of those hard-line conservatives, gave the game away and said he was flipping his vote because of the agreements that were made. Backroom deals deny the American people the transparency that they deserve. One of the things we keep hearing on the other side of the aisle is that we need to get this done, otherwise taxes will go up on the American people. Apparently, the President said that today while he was here in this building. It is completely false. Just this past week, Democrats introduced an amendment that would ensure the extension of the tax cuts for every American making under a billion dollars. Every Democrat voted yes. Every Republican voted no. This really is about the tax cuts for billionaires. Now, the President has also said: he would ``love and cherish Medicaid.'' My Republican friends, all of those included who have said that they would protect Medicaid, they have an opportunity to prove it. Right now at the well of the House Chamber is a discharge petition that would force a vote on my legislation, the Hands Off Medicaid and SNAP Act. It would stop permanently these outrageous cuts from happening. It would preserve healthcare.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, it would ensure these cuts do not happen. Right now we have 211 signatures, all from Democrats. We just need a few Republican Members to sign that discharge petition, and we will be able to love and cherish Medicaid as well as SNAP. That is all it would take, just a few Republican Members to save healthcare for millions and millions of Americans and save food assistance for millions more. I think it is clear, Mr. Speaker, the difference in priorities between this side of the aisle and the other side. It is the Members on this side of the aisle that are fighting to save healthcare for the American people, and it is our friends on the other side of the aisle who are fighting for the billionaire class.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I have to say it is like deja vu all over again because we were on the House floor about a month ago to have a debate about the House Republican budget reconciliation resolution, which included trillions of dollars in big giveaways that mostly benefit the top 1 percent, paid for, in part, by the biggest Medicaid cuts in American history, combined with trillions of dollars in new debt. Here we are again a month later and after the Senate Republicans made their changes, we have even more in tax-cut giveaways. Instead of $4.5 trillion, it is now $7 trillion, most of which one penny doesn't even pay for it, except, again, for cuts to Medicaid, as well as cuts to other programs. Now, there is a little bit of confusion here on a couple aspects, and I will quickly address them. First, on tax cuts, there is no question that there will not be a tax increase on working Americans. There is widespread agreement, on both sides of the aisle, when it comes to tax cuts on those making under a million dollars a year. In fact, in the Rules Committee a few weeks ago, a Democratic Member offered an amendment to say we agree. Where the disagreement lies is in those who make more than a million dollars a year. The top 1 percent, in fact, the top one-half of 1 percent. Every Democratic Member voted in favor of that amendment that would make clear we would be extending the tax cuts for everyone who makes up to $1 million. That is a massive amount of money. Every Democrat voted for it. Every Republican voted against it. Don't be confused and don't be scared by this scare tactic. If you are a middle-class American, if you are in the 99 percent, you will not see your taxes go up next year. There is no question about that. What is at issue is the tax cuts for multimillionaires, billionaires, and big corporations. Now, there is another part that has gotten confused or obscured, and that is with respect to the Medicaid cuts. As CBO confirmed in a letter they sent to Mr. Pallone and to me, there is no question that this piece of legislation before us calls for hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts, the largest in American history. There are some on the other side who have said the word ``Medicaid'' technically doesn't exist in the bill, therefore, these cuts don't exist. Give me a break. The instruction in this piece of legislation directs the Energy and Commerce Committee to identify at least $880 billion of cuts in those programs where they have jurisdiction. Guess what. Mr. Speaker, 93 percent of their jurisdiction is Medicare and Medicaid. You can literally cut everything else that they have jurisdiction over and that only gets you about $380 billion, so at least $500 billion, by definition, in order to follow and carry out these instructions, have to come from Medicaid. Now, finally, because I know we have a lot of speakers on this side, there is something additional in this new version of the reconciliation resolution. It is called current policy baseline. It is a fraud, and to House Republicans' credit, actually, in their proposal, they didn't rely on this fraud. Current policy baseline, with a straight face, wants you to believe that permanent extension of the tax cuts won't cost one dime. This would establish a dangerous new precedent here. For 51 years, we have operated under the Budget and Impoundment Control Act. For 51 years, we have had the Congressional Budget Office and we have had these rules, as imperfect as they may be, that we have to follow, that things have to be paid for within a 10-year window. Current policy baseline means that rule goes out the window. If we think that, in establishing this new precedent, this will be the only time it is ever used, that is crazy. If we think that we have a national debt issue right now, which we both agree on, it will get far, far worse if the new standard becomes this phony fraud of current policy baseline. Mr. Speaker, I look forward to the rest of the debate, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries), the Democratic leader.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Ms. Craig), the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Peters), a distinguished member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Panetta), a distinguished member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman), a distinguished member of the House Committee on the Budget.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Ms. Plaskett), a distinguished member of the House Committee on the Budget.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, the majority leader just said something absolutely remarkable. He said that there should be a parade for President Trump. I have very good news for him. There is going to be a parade for President Trump thrown by Donald Trump in honor of himself paid for by taxpayers to the tune of $92 million. Oh, but to the 72 million Americans watching at home and are on Medicaid: You are still going to get your Medicaid cut. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett), who is a distinguished member of the Budget Committee.

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Escobar), who is a distinguished member of the Budget Committee

Mr. BOYLE of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), who is a distinguished member of the Budget Committee.