Senator Marshall: Democrats Can Open Our Government at Any Time
Washington – On Tuesday, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kansas), hosted Kansas media outlets on a press call via Zoom to discuss the current Democrat government shutdown, emphasizing that the reason we are here is because of Chuck Schumer’s political games.
Click HERE or on the image above to watch the full press call.
Senator Marshall’s opening remarks as delivered:
“Well, good morning, everybody, and thanks for joining us this morning. This is day number seven of the government shutdown. I’m disappointed, horribly disappointed the government was shut down and that it still shut down.”
“I thought it would be good to talk to the Kansas press myself and try to answer some of your questions. If you had any, I thought number one, we would talk about what’s our goal here? What are the Republican goals right now?”
“So, number one, it was to keep the government open, and number two is to work towards responsible spending. To work towards responsible spending. The backdrop is that a nation that’s $37 trillion in national debt, we’re going to spend a trillion dollars this year on interest. The government is going to take in 5 trillion but spend $7 trillion this year. So, I think that’s the backdrop to us as Republicans. We want to keep the government open, but we also need responsible spending levels.”
“I think the next thing that I feel like some of my folks back home in the national media is not spending enough time, is understanding the process that it takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass something. So just because Republicans have the White House, the House of Representatives, in the Senate, doesn’t mean we can pass spending legislation. It takes 60 votes in the Senate to pass this. We have 53 Republican senators, so we’ll need at least seven, probably eight, Democrats to be able to pass this. Want to remind folks that over the last four years, with Joe Biden as president, over 12 times, Republicans walked across the aisle, walked the plank, and voted similarly for a stopgap resolution to keep the government funding open, so over a dozen times in those four years.”
“I think next, I would just mention that I feel like this is a political shutdown, and that’s why it’s so hard to predict when it’s going to end. I know there’s some smoke screens out there, some thoughts about policies, but I think mainly that this is a smoke screen. Our appropriations committee, made up of Republicans and Democrats, is making great progress, the fastest progress we made up here in decades. They had 90% of the spending levels done through the appropriations process, through the committee, ready to bring to the floor, but Senator Schumer has clogged that process up. And it wasn’t why I think this is political, that it wasn’t until 14 days out from the government shutdown date that Senator Schumer told us what his demands were. Those demands included spending another one and a half trillion dollars in addition to working with these, extending the covid subsidies as well for the ACA. So I don’t think that that’s a serious person, that I believe he wanted to shut the government down all along, that back in the spring, when they did a stopgap measure, that he caught a lot of grief from his far liberal left and the national media as well for not fighting back harder against President Trump’s policies.”
“So, it’s my belief that no matter what was going to happen, Senator Schumer wanted to shut the government down to prove to his left flank that he was fighting, and yes, he could be threatened in a primary by AOC, and she’s leading this charge that we need to do something over here. So, this was their response to doing something to fight back against President Trump. So, I believe that this is a political shutdown waiting for 14 days to say you wanted to extend these extended covid subsidies isn’t realistic, and we’ll talk about specifically why that’s not serious as well.”
“These are kind of deep subjects, and I wish I could make it even simpler, but I want to emphasize what they’re talking about. Our covid subsidies, not the original ACA subsidies, the ACA subsidies for people enrolled in the Affordable Care Act that those are going to continue no matter what happens, but also no matter what happens up here, I think everyone realizes that the Affordable Care Act is not affordable. The Affordable Care Act is not affordable. Insurance premiums are going to go up 18 to 20% next year. Again, regardless of what Congress does, premiums are going to go up 18 to 20%. The country is now spending 18% of its GDP on health care right now, that’s went from 13% a couple of decades ago to 18% of GDP. Where insurance costs have went up 400% over the past couple of decades. Health insurance has led inflation by all for all practical purposes as well. So, the real problem here when it comes to these ACA subsidies, the covid subsidies, is the cost of health care.”
“And just want to communicate, you heard President Trump say yesterday, and I’m going to repeat it today, that I want to fix health care, specifically the cost of health care. That’s one of the reasons. Yeah, I came up here, as much as anything. I think I’m the only member of Congress that’s ran a hospital, and I think that brings some unique experience. I’m the only member of Congress that’s oversaw three county health departments, along with running my own practice. So, I understand health care forward and backwards, and I think that there are solutions out there, but the real elephant in the room is the cost of health care, that in premiums are going to continue to go up regardless.”
“When it comes to these covid subsidies, the way that they’ve been set up has led to a lot of fraud. We think that there’s 25 to $50 billion of year each year in fraud from these subsidies. And I think if you would ask Kansans, do you think that we should fix this program or allow it to continue as is, and it’s going to. It’s complicated to fix the fraud, even if someone said, look, Roger, how would you do it right now? It would probably take a couple of weeks to a month to negotiate with my friends across the aisle on how to fix the fraud issue. That alone, I think, would. Say, why did Chuck Schumer wait till two weeks before the government was going to shut down to say, oh, he wanted to work on this?”
“So, the real problems with these covid subsidies, which the Democrats voted on and passed without any Republican votes four or five years ago, they set a sunset date on these for the end of this year, just like all the other covid subsidies. This was supposed to go down as well, so we’re not ending the ACA subsidies, the traditional ones.”
“What we’re trying to figure out is what to do with these special COVID-era subsidies that are allowing people making $200,000 a year to still have their health insurance subsidized by the federal government, and again, I want everyone to have access to health care. It’s one of my pillars for MAHA, so that’s the main, you know, reason they’re telling us they want to shut down the government. There are some other ones, and there’s some other issues, but I think I wanted to stop there and go to some questions. But that’s the main issue. Are these ACA covid extended subsidies, these enhanced subsidies? So, we’re going to go to questions.”
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Contact: Payton Fuller
