US Senate News:
Source: United States Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock – Georgia
“The Character of the Country is on the Line” Warnock Calls for GOP to Protect 16 Million Americans Who Risk Losing Health Care
Watch the full floor speech HERE
Senator Reverend Warnock: “Your health care is about to go up. Your hospital might close because they’re cutting these clean energy tax cuts, your utility bills are about to go up. And so I have a question tonight, who voted for that?”
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA) went to the floor of the United States Senate to call on his GOP colleagues to reject the GOP tax bill that will kick over 16 million Americans off their health care. Full video is available HERE.
“And in some ways, this is the same bill eight years later, just worse,” said Senator Reverend Warnock, comparing this moment to the 2017 tax bill. “Like most horror movies, the sequel tends to be worse. We were here eight years ago. Washington politicians were trying their best to gut the Affordable Care Act. Remember that? They were trying to gut Obamacare out of political motives. Millions of Americans were spared. But tonight is the sequel to that horror movie. They are back to their own political tricks, trying to dismantle the ACA again, with this legislation. It’s the same fight, just worse this time.”
“If they enact these deep cuts to Medicaid, as they are positioned not to extend these tax credits, they are raising the cost of health care for all of us,” continued Senator Reverend Warnock. “Even if you are on private insurance, you are not safe. Your health care is about to go up. Your hospital might close because they’re cutting these clean energy tax cuts, your utility bills are about to go up. And so I have a question tonight, who voted for that?…Who voted for everybody’s health care premiums to go up and their hospitals to be closed? Here’s what I know. Folks back in Georgia didn’t vote for that. They voted for me, and they voted for Donald Trump, but they didn’t vote for that.”
“This is symptomatic of the ways in which the people’s voices have been squeezed out of their democracy,” continued Senator Reverend Warnock. “This is not just a health care fight, it is that. It is not just a fight for food security, for SNAP, it is that. But in a real sense, it is a fight for our democracy. Whose voice gets to be heard in this chamber? That’s what this is about—the character of the country.”
Now, let me be clear, I’m all for tax cuts. I believe working families deserve a tax cut, and I certainly don’t want to see them face a tax hike this year,” continued Senator Reverend Warnock. “That’s why I want to nearly double the child tax credit. I believe in tax cuts for hard-working families, for middle-class people, for working-class families. But instead of doing that, instead of helping working-class families who are struggling now against a 10% tax on everything, rising costs, we’re now burdening our children by adding $3 trillion to the debt. We’re taking away health care from kids and then burdening them with the debt.
“When the people hear about what’s in this Big Ugly Bill, they don’t like it…” said Senator Reverend Warnock. “The American people do not want to rob our children of food and health care, and then burn them with trillions in debt to give billionaires and wealthy corporations another tax cut….And so if the people do not want this bill, if they are trying to pass it. Here’s the question you got to ask yourselves at home, you have to ask yourselves, well, who are they working for? Who are they fighting for? Who do they think matters? Do you think they are working for you?”
The Senator’s speech comes a day after he held a vigil with a multi-faith coalition of clergy to pray that GOP lawmakers have the courage to stand up for their constituents and vote against the GOP tax bill. The Senator was arrested in 2017, before he was elected to the Senate, along with a coalition of multi-faith leaders, while protesting the GOP tax bill during the first Trump Administration.
A full and unofficial transcript is availabe below. Watch the full speech HERE.
Madam President, I rise tonight in a moral moment in our nation. As we debate this bill, so much is on the line. The health care of over 16 million Americans, 750,000 of them Georgians, is on the line. Food for hungry children in a wealthy nation where one in five children are already food insecure—they don’t know where the next meal is coming from—their livelihood, their welfare, is on the line. The well-being of seniors in nursing homes and the disabled who rely on Medicaid and those who care for them is on the line. The state of rural hospitals in Georgia, in Alaska, in Louisiana, in little towns all over this nation that are right now barely hanging on is on the line, and the scraps that they are throwing them while cutting them will not save them.
My friends on the other side of the aisle know it. They know that these scraps that they’re throwing at rural hospitals will not save them. And so in a very real sense, lives are on the line.
We are in a moral moment because something else is on the line. I submit that the character of the country is on the line.
In a real sense, the question tonight is, who are we? Not who we tell ourselves we are, but who are we really? What and who do we care about? What kind of nation are we? What kind of people do we want to be? Who matters and who doesn’t? What do we think is dispensable?
In no place is the answer to that question clearer than in a nation’s budget. I submit that a budget is not just a fiscal document, a budget is a moral document. Show me your budget, and I’ll show you who you think matters and who doesn’t.
If this awful budget were an EKG, it would suggest that our nation has a heart problem and is in need of moral certainty.
And so I’m clear tonight. I understand the nature of what we are engaged in. This is a political process, it is, but it is also a moral exercise, not only for the nation, but for each of us, individually, and especially for the mere 100 of us out of a nation of 300 million who get to vote, perhaps in a matter of hours.
We have the rare privilege of standing up for the people who have entrusted with us the covenant of centering their families. It’s a real privilege for the people of your state to say that since we can’t all go to Washington, we’re going to trust you in rules of power to be thinking about our children, to be thinking about our parents as they deal with the blessings and the burdens of growing old.
So the question for me tonight is, how will we show up in this moment?
That’s why yesterday, I gathered in the Russell Rotunda with a multi-faith coalition of clergy to pray that lawmakers might have the courage to stand up to their party, stand up to the special interests and protect seniors in nursing homes and pregnant mothers on Medicaid and children who risk going to school hungry every single day in this country. One in five children in the wealthiest nation on the planet already food insecure, and with these SNAP cuts, this body is about to make it worse.
And so, surrounded by clergy of many faith traditions, yesterday, I prayed that we would have the courage, prayed that we would have the grace to stand as voices for the voiceless. And as I stood there, I could not help but feel a sense of deja vu. This is not the first time I’ve been in our nation’s Capitol speaking out against these policies that betray hard-working families. It was eight years ago, almost to the day in 2017 when Washington Republicans were trying to pass a tax bill that favored wealthy Americans over working families, that I came to this building, not as a senator, but as a pastor. I had no idea that eight years later I would be serving in this body. I had no notion that I would even run for the Senate. I came as a citizen, standing with a multi-faith coalition. We were praying for our nation’s leaders. We were gathered in the rotunda of the Russell building, and as we were singing and praying, the Capitol Police said, “I’m sorry, pastors, you can’t sing and pray in the rotunda. If you do not disperse, we will have to arrest you.”
And let me say that the Capitol Police did not mishandle us that day. They were first-rate professionals. They said that if you don’t disperse, we will have to arrest you. What they didn’t understand is that I had already been arrested. My conscience had been arrested, my heart and my imagination, my moral imagination, had been arrested by this idea that we as a country are better than this.
I come from a tradition where you don’t just pray with your lips, you pray with your legs, put your body in the struggle for other struggling bodies. So here I am tonight, eight years later, having transformed my agitation into legislation, I was arrested that day, but I have transformed my protest into public policy.
Eight years ago, I was on the outside. Tonight, I’m on the inside, but it’s the same fight. Some of us fight on the inside, some of us fight on the outside. Some of us get to serve in the Senate or in the House. Others are just watching at home tonight, but be really clear that we are in the same fight—whether we are on the streets or in the suites, same fight.
And in some ways, this is the same bill eight years later, just worse. Like most horror movies, the sequel tends to be worse. We were here eight years ago. Washington politicians were trying their best to gut the Affordable Care Act. Remember that? They were trying to gut Obamacare out of political motives. Millions of Americans were spared. But tonight is the sequel to that horror movie. They are back to their own political tricks, trying to dismantle the ACA again, with this legislation. It’s the same fight, just worse this time.
Instead of extending tax credits that would lower health insurance costs for the middle class, my friends on the other side are giving billionaires and the richest of the rich a tax cut. They are working real hard tonight to help billionaires, because God knows that they are having a hard time, apparently.
What that means is that 1.2 million Georgians and nearly 20 million Americans are going to see their health care premiums rise. That’s what’s at stake tonight.
If they enact these deep cuts to Medicaid, as they are positioned not to extend these tax credits, they are raising the cost of health care for all of us. Even if you are on private insurance, you are not safe. Your health care is about to go up. Your hospital might close because they’re cutting these clean energy tax cuts, your utility bills are about to go up. And so I have a question tonight, who voted for that?
Some of us are Democrats, some of us are Republicans, some of us are independent. Some voted for one party, some voted for the other party. I get it, but who voted for that? Who voted for everybody’s health care premiums to go up and their hospitals to be closed?
Here’s what I know. Folks back in Georgia didn’t vote for that. They voted for me, and they voted for Donald Trump, but they didn’t vote for that.
Ordinary folks don’t want this. There’s ordinary, everyday people who who barely pay attention to politics. They don’t want this. Even a Fox News poll, and you won’t often hear me say that, but even a Fox News poll from this month found that Americans don’t support this Big Ugly Bill.
This is symptomatic of the ways in which the people’s voices have been squeezed out of their democracy. This is not just a health care fight, it is that. It is not just a fight for food security, for SNAP, it is that. But in a real sense, it is a fight for our democracy. Whose voice gets to be heard in this chamber? That’s what this is about—the character of the country.
Ordinary Americans don’t want to do this to our children. That’s why they need to know that 71% of all Medicaid enrollees in Georgia are children. 71%. Taking away health care from kids to pay for tax cuts for billionaires.
Now, let me be clear, I’m all for tax cuts. I believe working families deserve a tax cut, and I certainly don’t want to see them face a tax hike this year. That’s why I want to nearly double the child tax credit. I believe in tax cuts for hard-working families, for middle class people, for working-class families.
But instead of doing that, instead of helping working class families who are struggling now against a 10% tax on everything, rising costs, we’re now burdening our children by adding $3 trillion to the debt. We’re taking away health care from kids and then burdening them with the debt. We are engaged in Robin Hood in reverse, this body, of stealing from the poor in order to give to the rich. This massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the to the top. This is socialism for the rich.
When the people hear about it, guess what? They don’t like it, Democrats and Republicans and Independents. When the people hear about what’s in this Big Ugly Bill, they don’t like it. That’s why the folks on the other side are trying their best to fast-track it. That’s why they’re trying to pass it and they haven’t even finished writing it—twisting themselves in knots, making their members walk the plank under the threat of a primary to pass this Big Ugly Bill.
The American people do not want to rob our children of food and health care, and then burn them with trillions in debt to give billionaires and wealthy corporations another tax cut. The people do not want this bill.
And so if the people do not want this bill, if they are trying to pass it. Here’s the question you got to ask yourselves at home, you have to ask yourselves, well, who are they working for? Who are they fighting for? Who do they think matters? Do you think they are working for you?
This is a moral moment and a budget is a moral document. We have been summoned to this moment, people of faith and people of moral courage who claim no particular faith at all. Maybe because I was here yesterday and eight years ago for a similar fight with faith leaders. Maybe because I’m a preacher, and it’s Sunday, and I’ve been here instead of church, I have especially been thinking about those of us who are people of faith. People whose lives are informed by scripture, people of the book. And maybe those of us who have different politics but read from the same book ought to spend some time together reading the book, because I do sometimes wonder, and I say this with all humility, none of us owns the truth. But if I’m honest, there are days when I have to ask people of my faith tradition as a Christian, are we reading the same book?
The book I know says, I was hungry and you fed me. I was sick, I was in prison, and you visited me. I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. In as much as you’ve done it to the least of these, you’ve done it also unto me. The book that I love says, learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow, speak out for those who cannot. Speak for the rights of the destitute. Speak out. Judge righteously. Defend the rights of the poor and the needy. My book says whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord and will be repaid in full. The prophet Amos condemns those who buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals. They sell the poor out and working class people for cheap.
For those of us who have a vote in this moment, my colleagues, who are swinging on a moral dilemma, I hear the prophet Micah say he has already told you what is good. What does the Lord require that you do justice, love, kindness, walk humbly with your God.
May God be with our nation and grant us grace, wisdom and courage for this moment.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
