The Senator’s full remarks can be viewed here.

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, today spoke on the Senate floor to object to a health care bill offered by U.S. Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), and urge her colleagues to support a clean, three year extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits.

Below are Senator Blunt Rochester’s remarks, as prepared:

Mr. President. I had the honor of serving with Senator Marshall in the House—we were classmates, we came in together in 2016. And just last week we introduced the PBM Disclosure Act together. A bill on PBM transparency—we’ve worked on important things. And at this moment, I can think of nothing more important than addressing our nation’s health care crisis. But unfortunately, I cannot support what’s being proposed here, today.  

Listen, we all agree our health care system needs improvement. And Democrats have put forward proposals to do just that. But this bill claims to fix the premium crisis and take on fraud. In reality, it would kick millions of Americans off their ACA health care coverage. Premiums would go up for over ten million people, by an average of over $1,000. And to top it all off, this bill would add new abortion restrictions. It is yet another harmful proposal from Republicans, while the clock is ticking for American families.  

Almost a dozen proposals have been offered by Republicans in the Senate and the House in the just last few weeks. That’s tantamount to throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. For months, we’ve asked Republicans to come to the table. During the shutdown, they said they couldn’t talk to us about health care, yet they were still holding hearings on all kinds of things. They spent the first six months of the year passing tax cuts for billionaires. Apparently, that wasn’t the time to talk to us either.  

The very first bill I cosponsored as a United States Senator, back in January, was the Health Care Affordability Act, which would have permanently extended the ACA tax credits. Now its December—almost a year later! As I already said, we’ve received almost a dozen plans from Republicans. And they’re still coming! I think another one came in late last night!  

Let us, help you, help your constituents. Democrats are offering the cleanest, easiest, simplest way to deal with the immediate health care cliff that Americans are facing. And give us time to improve our health care system. It would even give us a chance to go through your thousands of plans and concepts of plans. But this bill is “too little, too late.”

For that reason, I respectfully object. 

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Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester represents Delaware in the United States Senate where she serves on the Committees on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; Environment and Public Works; and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.