and where it doesn't. it's been a long morning for all of you. i very much appreciate your participation in today's hearing and the work you do and the perspectives you offered. i'm told senator graham is not coming after all. it falls upon me to not just think all of our witnesses but remind folks that the hearing record will remain open for one week for statement to be submitted into the record. questions for the record may be submitted by senators by five of 5 p.m. on wednesday, february 26. unless there is anything further from the nameplates, this hearing is adjourned.

sen. hassan: more people can work and our economy gets stronger. we expended medicaid because we understood that in a great country like ours, there is nothing american about turning our backs on our neighbors or leaving seniors who need nursing home care to fend for themselves. in this country come everyone should be free to get ahead and stay ahead. this is america, and this is the country where everybody counts and matters in which means everybody needs and has to have access to quality, affordable care. if the republican budget passes, it will be the end of medicaid as we know it. or people will get sick, -- more people will get sick, our economy will be weakened, and families will get hurt. i want to say one other thing,

when we expended medicaid in new hampshire, one of the groups of people who were really helped where people who were too sick to work. for instance, they might've been laid off, so they didn't have health insurance anymore. their chronic illness got worse. they could only get health care when it got really emergent. then they would sink back into chronic illness again and they were never well enough to work, and it was this vicious cycle. when medicaid expansion came around, those people got health care. and i still remember the people who came up to me and told me that they hadn't been able to look for job or work for over a year, let's say, after a layoff. they got medicaid expansion, they got the health care they needed, they got to work, they got off medicaid, they got onto private insurance. so this is a really important program for people all across the country with chronic illness, and it is a really important program for employers who want a workforce that is ready and able and healthy enough to work.

the american people deserve to know why support for a child with asthma or treatment for someone struggling with addiction should be sacrificed to pay for another tax break for multimillionaires. i urge my republican colleagues to follow the bipartisan example we said in new hampshire and in many other states. they need to reverse course, and they need to stand up for medicaid, because when they stand up for medicaid, they are standing up for the people of their states. thank you. i am now turning it over to the wonderful senator from georgia, senator warnock. sen. warnock: thank you so much, senator hassan. great to be here with my colleagues. a budget is more than a physical document. -- fiscal document. it is also a moral document. show me your budget, and i will show you who you think matters. who is income who is out, who

you think is expendable, where your priorities are. as we take stock of what their washington republicans are trying to do now, this budget if it were an ekg suggest that washington republicans have a heart problem, and they are in need of moral surgery. so the consequences of the actions that they are trying to take in this moment hits into the lives of ordinary people. i think too often those of us who work in this space and those who cover us sort of cover the politicians. when the politics becomes about the politicians, we lose sight of where and how this actually matters for ordinary people. what they are trained to do is both immoral -- what they are trying to do is both immoral and

impractical. i've been working in this health care fight for years. long before i decided to run for the united states senate. i was fighting for health care in georgia. i remember when we passed the affordable care act can how glad i was that happened. and i went into the georgia capitol and staged a sit in the governor's office because that governor and the next governor and the governor after that have all refused to expand medicaid in georgia. it suggests that politicians have a heart problem. jesus said where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. dr. king, who pastored the church where i now serve, set of all the injustices, inequality in health care is the most shocking and the most inhumane. they are busy trying to pass a

tax cut for the wealthiest people in america, billionaires and millionaires, and they are doing it on the backs on ordinary people. this cannot stand. and so we will continue to hold them accountable, and we encourage all of our constituents to hold them accountable. and so because i've been focused on this issue, glad now to serve on the finance committee with the great ron wyden, and will be focused on these issues, but i got arrested in georgia trying to get health care for folks, staging a sit-in in the governor's office. got arrested in this capitol in 2017 when they were trying to do this and think, passage $2 trillion tax cut at the expense of the poor and the farm bill, and i decided to move from being an agitator to a

legislator. we have got to keep on agitating even if it is inside of these halls. and so when i came to the senate, i talked to all of my colleagues in the democratic caucus, and they agreed with me that we needed to provide georgia and other non-expansion states some more incentives to expand. remember, we got $14.2 billion for the non-expansion states to expand, $2 billion just for georgia alone. you know what georgia did? georgia left that money on the table and left over 600,000 georgians in a health care coverage gap. some got the message north carolina took those incentives and expended it, purple state . kentucky expanded it. now they are trying to go after these incentives. they want to go after the tax credits that would allow people to get health care. and this has consequences on the lives of ordinary people. we have seen a dozen hospitals

in georgia close over the last decade. those hospitals could be open to paying customers if they can't get access to medicaid. -- if they could get access to medicaid. i often think about heather payne, who is a traveling nurse from dublin, georgia. georgia has a health care program, if you want to call it that that has not enrolled 10,000 people. heather payne is one of those people stuck in the gap. as one of my colleagues pointed out, we talked about medicaid expansion, we are talking about the working folk. heather payne is a traveling nurse who is taking care of patients even during covid. and then because she was a traveling nurse, some days she had health care, someday she didn't have health care.

she went enough to get conventional medicaid any program she was eligible for cost between $500 in $1000 a month. it was too much. one day she realized something was happening to everybody. she knew something wasn't right. she saved up enough money of her own cash to finally go and see a neurologist. at neurologist said you have actually had a series of mini strokes that require additional care. here she is, she needs additional care, but he does not health care. and so she is literally caught up in the gap between the refusal of the state of georgia to expand medicaid in these onerous work requirements in states like georgia. she is sick, too sick to work, and she is being asked to prove she can work or that she is working so that she can get health care.

why'd they give elon musk and people like him a tax cut? let me put this in perspective and close, and about his future when he says 'in---- baptist preacher when he says "in closing." elon musk has got $18 billion in incentives from our federal government. he's the one who is telling us that the rest of us need to tighten our belts. this is backwards. it's not only immoral, it's impractical. we are making the american workforce so current weaker, which i think ultimately -- sicker and weaker, which i think ultimately is a national security issue. if got -- we have got to straighten out this mess for people like heather payne, who was waiting right at this very moment to get health care she deserves. now i turn it over to the

chairman of the finance committee, my friend senator ron wyden. sen. wyden: thank you, senator warnock. it is a tough act to follow, my friend from georgia. let me think senator baldwin, chair of the strike team, and she is physically the nba all-stars of the finance committee. [laughter] i will be really short. nobody should lose sight of what exactly happened this morning, and that is donald trump endorsed the house budget resolution today. in this resolution mandates that it hundred $80 billion in cuts -- $880 billion in cuts come from the house energy and commerce committee. i was a member of that committee back in the day when i had a full head of hair and rugged good looks. i will just tell you, there is no plausible way to hit that target without hundreds of

billions of dollars in cuts to medicaid and a home care and for kids and the like. -- and nursing home care and for kids and the like. those cuts mean that benefits will get cut, families are going to lose health insurance, full stop. now, i was also on the senate finance committee in 2017, the last time donald trump and the republicans came after medicaid. and if there is one thing that members of congress around since that day remember, it is when you go after people's health care. in my state, one out of three have medicaid as a lifeline. you go after that, you have held up a -- you have hell to pay. this last weekend i had townhall meetings in a suburban part of the state, and the papers and

said "thousands of oregonians show up to make clear how they feel about matters like cuts in medicaid. and musk -- and elon musk can rattle off a bunch of federal programs he wants to gut for support on twitter, but with thousands of people told me in a town hall unlike any i ever had, and i've been doing this a while, they said these cuts that musk has been pushing so hard are going to have a real devastating consequences for families and communities. to these people whose lives are going to be worse off for medicaid cuts, it is cold comfort that their hardship allows a billionaire pal of donald trump to pick up another mansion or yacht. the last point i want to make, because we want to have senator baldwin be are closer and cordoning all the questions that i bet you guys have -- my closer

is my experience dealing with medicaid over the years is there will be an effort by republicans to keep the medicaid cuts hidden behind the curtain. they did that on the floor when they closed the debate about robert kennedy, and the senior member, the chair, said oh, we are not doing anything, and i got him and said, are you kidding me? as we speak, they are working on their billion dollars worth of cuts. my colleagues are making it clear that we are not backing down from the fight, and i'm happy to be involved with it, and senator baldwin is doing an excellent job being head of our task force on this and i look forward to working with her, and in the parlance of the senate, i yield the floor. sen. baldwin: well, any questions? yes? reporter: [inaudible]

sen. baldwin: i think in addition to our own actions, we are learning the american public. it was the american public, our constituents can who voiced concerns during the first trump administration, which led to our being able to save the affordable care act, obamacare. people understood that this was a critical threat to their health and well-being. we are sounding the alarm. last night the president said "i'm not touching medicare, medicaid, social security, not touching them." by this morning he endorsed the house budget resolution, which paves the way for massive cuts to medicaid. and people have got to be aware. we also have to explain what

medicaid does. the posters that are here talk about who is covered, over 70 million americans who get medicaid, whether that is for seniors in long-term care, whether that is over 30 million children, americans with disabilities. and it also is the lifeblood for some of our critical access rural hospitals, community health clinics, etc. without medicaid, many of those would disappear. we have got to sound the alarm, inform, and organize. reporter: [inaudible] sen. baldwin: well, we will have two shots at this. we have the budget resolution -- remember, there is disagreement between the house and the senate right now. the president has just endorsed the house's one-budget approach. and yet the senate right now is

taking a two-bill approach. and we are poised to take action on that budget yet this week, to be followed if it passes by budget reconciliation process. we have amendments. those amendments -- hopefully we can get some republican votes on some of those. but those amendments will be clearly designed to show the american public what is at risk right now. sen. hassan: if i can just add to be clear on the budget reconciliation process, the republicans have complete control of this. these are majority vote thresholds. this is up to the republicans about whether they are going to go through with the president's commitment to cut taxes for multibillionaires at the expense of the medicaid program and other critical programs american people rely on this is what the republicans are

in control of, and it is on them if these medicaid cuts go through. reporter: [inaudible] sen. baldwin: well, look, the news of the last 24 hours is pretty new, but we have time to do that. you know, this is an issue that affects, as i said in my remarks, this hurts purple states and red states. in some cases the more rural your state, the more severe the ramifications are for deep medicaid cuts. i do hope that not only will we be speaking with our republican colleagues, but that their administrators of critical access hospitals, the chief medical officer's of community health centers will also be reaching out and sharing the ramifications of these cuts.

yes? reporter: [inaudible] sen. baldwin: absolutely. we do not want to see fraud, we do not want to see waste. we want to see efficiency. but let me be clear, the massive cuts we are talking about in the house budget resolution are far beyond what efforts to pare back against fraud and waste would achieve. we are talking about massive cuts to the very children, people with disabilities, rural americans, seniors. that is what we need to talk about. you heard from my colleague

catherine cortez masto who had earned her very office the medicaid fraud unit. we are all for fighting fraud, just like the attorney general of north carolina. but when we are talking about the cuts, the depth they are contemplating, again, nearly a trillion dollars, their tax break for the billionaires is $.6 trillion -- $4.6 trillion, unless the number has changed. they will be digging deep. they will ask the most vulnerable americans to pay and sacrifice so elon musk and donald trump and their like, their ilk, can get massive tax cuts. and that should not stand. sen. wyden: fight fraud, not nursing home services. sen. hassan: and i also add, inspector general of the department of health and human services has a long record of going after fraud and wrongdoers and holding them accountable and getting that money back. the trump administration has

fired almost all of the inspectors general, the very people who go after fraud, waste, and abuse in our government and have a track record of getting results for air speaking out of both sides of their mouth here --they are speaking out of both sides of their mouth here. sen. baldwin: all right, thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2025] >> vice president jd vance is scheduled to give remarks on thursday at the conservative political action conference, or cpac. watch live at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span, c-span now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-span.org. >> c-span, democracy unfiltered. we are funded by these

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