Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss the fiscally irresponsible one big, beautiful bill that simply gives tax breaks for the richest Americans and takes away services for working- and middle- class families.

Here are the facts: We currently have about a $36 trillion debt, and we are spending right now $2 trillion more every year than we take in. The Republican budget would add $3.8 trillion to that deficit. It will do that over 10 years.

How are they going to get those $3.8 trillion of tax breaks? Let me just outline who those tax breaks are going to go to: $96 billion a year are going to go to people who make over a million dollars a year. If you are a millionaire in America, you are going to get about $82,000 a year in tax breaks. If you are making under $100,000, you get about $750 in tax breaks. That is $82,000 of tax breaks for the millionaires, and $750 to working- and middle-class families. That is not a fair deal.

Democrats believe that we need to raise taxes on people who are making over a million dollars, not give them $82,000 a year in tax breaks.

By the way, the tax breaks for those millionaires and billionaires are permanent over 10 years. The tax breaks the Democrats support for working-class families, like no tax on tips, they only want them for 4 years. Democrats have been fighting to get the no tax on tips for 10 years. Republicans say: No, for working families, we only want 4 years. Tax breaks for the billionaires in my district in Silicon Valley, for those we want 10 years.

Then what are they cutting? They are cutting $750 billion in Medicaid benefits. That is just a fact. Go Google it. You will see the cuts. They claim that people aren't going to lose their healthcare, but the independent CBO says that up to 14 million Americans may lose their healthcare. Up to a million of American children, kids born in the United States, may lose their healthcare. It is the largest cut to Medicaid in the history of this country, all to finance $96 billion a year of tax breaks to the millionaires and billionaires. Those are the facts.

Look, CBO did an analysis, and they said that the top 10 percent in America are going to benefit enormously from this bill. If you are in the top 10 percent, if you make over a million dollars, over a half a million dollars, you should applaud.

The bottom 10 percent, the folks who are working hard, struggling to make ends meet, the truck drivers, people who work at Walmart, nurses, HVAC technicians are going to lose 4 percent.

This bill benefits those who are already doing well and ignores those who are working hard and struggling the most. It is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.

Even Donald Trump challenged the Congress to say: Raise taxes a bit on the rich. I am fine with it. Did the Republicans do that? No. They cut them further for the wealthy.

People ask what do Democrats believe? Democrats believe that the tax breaks and the tax cuts should be going to the working and middle class in this country. Democrats believe we should be taxing more the people who are making a million and a billion dollars a year. We believe we should not be cutting Medicaid, essential healthcare services that help families, that support hospitals, and that support the health of so many seniors in this country.

This debate is about whose side are Members on. Are my colleagues for those who already benefited from the income divide, or for the working and middle class? I hope enough Republicans on the other side will say ``no'' to these cuts of working-class benefits.

I hope enough Republicans will say ``no'' to the tax breaks for the millionaires and billionaires, and will say ``no'' to piling on more debt which will raise interest rates, hurting our economic growth, exploding our trade deficit because of our reliance on foreign firms and foreign investment, and crippling ordinary Americans' ability to get loans.

It is bad economics. We need a new approach.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce as legislation President Trump's executive order for the most-favored-nation status on drug pricing.

My legislation will codify President Trump's executive order, which basically says that Americans should not pay more for drugs than people in other countries and other parts of the world.

Right now, we are paying two to three times more for our drugs than people in other industrialized nations. This executive order, codified by the legislation, will allow our Cabinet Secretaries to put pressure on Big Pharma and make sure that they are not price gouging and will allow for the importation of cheaper drugs.

Why do we need the legislation? The reality is that Big Pharma will sue over the executive order, like they did in the previous Trump administration. In the previous administration, they managed to kill the executive order. The only way we can stand up to Big Pharma is to codify legislation, which the President wants to do in an executive order.

Here is the deal. If I can cross the aisle and support President Trump's executive order and legislation, every Republican should be willing to cross the aisle and support my legislation.

It is a pretty simple test. Are we going to stand in this body with the $16 billion that Big Pharma spent on lobbying, or are we going to stand with the American people? We will know that answer based on how many cosponsors we get for my legislation that simply codifies Donald Trump's executive order.

Opposing Medicaid and NIH Budget Cuts

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose the cruel budget cuts on Medicaid and NIH. I don't want to sensationalize. I just want to give some of the facts.

The Republican budget would cut $715 billion from Medicaid. They are going to freeze this thing called a provider tax, which means that the Federal Government is going to give $600 billion less to hospitals across this country.

That is going to mean, according to the independent Congressional Budget Office, that almost 8.6 million people will lose their insurance. It is going to mean that many hospitals won't be able to offer services in physical therapy and mental health counseling. It is going to mean, unfortunately, that rural hospitals close.

Don't take my word for it. Take the word of Senator Josh Hawley, who represents the State of Missouri. He said that these Medicaid cuts would be a total betrayal by the President and the Republican Party of the working class.

I never thought I would be quoting Josh Hawley, but everyone should read his op-ed. He was pretty clear that these cuts would be devastating for working families.

Look at the cuts to the NIH. A report released today by the Senate says there is already a 31 percent decrease in cancer research in this country. The NIH has been decimated with 30 percent effectiveness and almost a 40 percent cut. This is money that goes not just into cancer research but into Alzheimer's research and Parkinson's research.

We used to have a bipartisan consensus in this country that we did not cut Medicaid, that we did not cut medical research, and that we did not give more tax breaks in my district in Silicon Valley, to the billionaires in my district, at the expense of medical research and the working class.

Mr. Speaker, I hope people in this body will reconsider the cruel cuts to Medicaid.

I hope people in this body will reconsider the cruel cuts to Medicaid, the cruel cuts to NIH, and tax the billionaires in my district a little more so we don't have to cut these essential programs.

Mr. Speaker, the stock market is decimated, almost 20 percent down, entering bear territory. At the same time, bond yields are skyrocketing, meaning ordinary Americans are going to have higher interest rates on their credit cards and their mortgages. It means we are going to have to pay more on our debt.

At the same time, the dollar is declining and prices are going up, meaning it is going to be harder to afford groceries.

Mr. Speaker, these are the most self-destructive, wealth-destroying policies any administration has undertaken in modern American history. They have tariffs at 1909 levels at 22.5 percent, making a global trade war. Businesses have lost confidence.

There is only one way out. We need a reset of this President's economic team. Howard Lutnick was talking about building more screws in America, as if we were living in the 19th century. He needs to go.

We need new economic thinkers with this President who actually understand how the economy works and can turn things around.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Deluzio for his leadership and for convening this group and focusing us on an agenda of economic patriotism.

The reality is in this country, and as you know in western Pennsylvania, we have watched industry after industry leave the country for China and Mexico.

Western Pennsylvania won us our freedom. They produced more steel than Japan and Germany combined in World War II, and yet today we have got 4 percent of the world's steel. China has 50 percent of the world's steel.

Aluminum left, paper left, and textiles left. Town after town in this country was hollowed out since 2000, and 90,000 factories have closed. That doesn't just mean jobs leaving. We have all heard the stories of people whose families were destroyed. The reality is that these factories left and people faced suicide. One of the folks in Warren, Ohio, told me 13 people, because of these plant closures, took their lives or faced severe depression. Our country has watched for 50 years. Rosa DeLauro didn't watch. She was speaking out against these bad trade deals.

However, for most of American history in the last 50 years we have watched the hollowing out of these communities, and we watched wealth pile up in districts like mine in Silicon Valley and New York. My district has $14 trillion of wealth. The income inequality in this country soared.

So one of the things this group wants to do is to renew economic revitalization in advanced manufacturing in these communities and to have a real plan for new semiconductors, new robotics, advanced steel, advanced automobiles, and have new factories and new industry come up.

Now, the President and JD Vance understood that the country was hollowed out, and they understood that people were angry, legitimately angry, and they understood that the ship of America had a huge hole in it.

The problem is they get here and their plan to solve this is to hand the reins to a number of headstrong billionaires who are libertarians. I have known these folks. I have known Elon for 15 years. I don't know what Elon knows about Johnstown, Pennsylvania, or Farrell, Pennsylvania, or Youngstown. He is going to go out and make deals with the UAE, and they are supercharging the private-sector deals. The problem is that is not going to build the communities that have been hollowed out.

We know what builds communities from Hamilton to Lincoln to FDR. We need a government that says: If you make it in America then we will buy it. That is what we did, by the way, for SpaceX. That is what we did for Intel. That is what we did in World War II. We need a government that says: If you skill the factories here we will help finance it. We need a government that

says that we are going to work to invest in the plumbers, electricians, and machinists so we can actually have a workforce that builds the new factories we need.

We need to say that we are going to have housing in this area to have economic revitalization. We need a national economic development strategy, and Senator Rubio and I actually coauthored a bill on that.

That is not what the White House is doing. Instead, they think that just having these billionaires cut deals with the private sector is going to help the working or middle class. It will help my district. We will make more money with AI. It will help more of the financial and technology elites.

I will tell you what it is not going to do, Mr. Speaker. It is not going to rebuild the communities that have had a raw deal in America.

What economic patriots believe, even though we have different ideologies, is that it is ordinary Americans who built this country and it is working-class Americans and middle-class Americans who built the country. The genius lies not with billionaires and technologists. It lies with hardworking Americans. We are going to build this country back from the bottom up. That is our belief.

I appreciate Representative Deluzio's leadership on this.

My friend, Fareed Zakaria, had this whole spiel on how manufacturing doesn't matter. I like Fareed usually, but on this he is dead wrong. He cited Japan and Germany as countries that did manufacturing and missed the tech boom. So he said: Well, we should do the tech boom and the finance boom, and we don't need to do manufacturing.

He did cite one country that did a bit of both, China. China did a lot of manufacturing. They took all of our manufacturing. America needs to understand if we are going to innovate, then yes, we should innovate on technology, and yes, we should innovate on finance. However, we also have to have advanced manufacturing in this country to remain the world superpower.

People say comparative advantage, but comparative advantage is you get to choose what your comparative advantage is in, Mr. Speaker. If China had just done comparative advantage, then they would have been growing rice for 30 years. That was their comparative advantage. They said: No, we want to build things.

It is time America realizes we want to be building things and realizes the value of advanced manufacturing. Representative Deluzio certainly gets it. He is one of the brightest voices in Congress.

I also want to recommend his op-ed. It is the best piece written on trade policy in the last 30 years of any that I have read.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's leadership, and I appreciate his convening this.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Black Maternal Health Week from April 11 to April 17 in Santa Clara County. This annual observance highlights the urgent need to address disparities in maternal health outcomes for Black women, ensuring that all mothers receive equitable, respectful, and high-quality healthcare.

The United States continues to face a maternal health crisis, with Black women experiencing significantly higher rates of pregnancy- related complications and maternal mortality compared to their white counterparts. These tragic and preventable outcomes stem from systemic inequities, implicit bias in healthcare, and social determinants that disproportionately impact Black mothers.

Santa Clara County has taken meaningful steps to acknowledge and address these disparities and commit to initiatives that improve maternal health access, education, and outcomes. Community-based organizations, healthcare advocates, and local leaders are working tirelessly to ensure that Black mothers receive the culturally competent care and support they deserve.

I commend the leadership in Santa Clara County for prioritizing this critical issue and uplifting Black maternal health as a matter of public health and racial justice. However, we must do more at the federal level to address these inequities. I call upon my colleagues in Congress to support legislation such as the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act, which aims to expand access to healthcare, invest in community-driven solutions, and promote policies that will save lives.

Black Maternal Health Week is not just a time for awareness but a call to action. We must listen to the voices of Black mothers, amplify their experiences, and enact meaningful change to ensure that maternal health equity becomes a reality.

Madam Speaker, last week, President Trump came in this Chamber and said he was going to balance the budget immediately. I will just go over some facts, not politically speaking, just facts.

We have got a $36 trillion debt. That is where we stand.

Currently, we are running a $1.8 trillion deficit. If you were to balance the budget, that would be zero and we should stay at a $36 trillion debt.

What does President Trump do with the Republicans? What is their budget? Their budget actually is going to add $28 trillion of debt over the next 10 years.

Here is the kicker. It is not just that they aren't balancing it to keep it at $36 trillion; it is that they are adding more debt by adding to the deficits more than the current deficits.

The current deficit projection would add $23.9 trillion of debt, but the Republicans want to add $28.5 trillion of debt, $4.6 trillion more of debt spending than the current deficit spending.

I just ask for some math. You want to deficit spend to have tax breaks for the wealthy because you think that will help the economy, fine, but every American should look at this chart because the Republican budget is making the deficit and the debt worse. It is not balancing the budget.

Now I will speak about my second chart.

Madam Speaker, many of us want to cut waste, fraud, and abuse from government, so where should we look first? Well, how about the Pentagon, which has 13 percent of the Federal budget.

Mr. Musk, who I have known for 15 years, is firing all these veterans. Is he saving money? Let's look at this chart. All of the DOGE firings, 0.004 percent of the budget, is where Mr. Musk's cuts have come. That is 455 times less than the Republican tax breaks, which are 1.82 percent of the budget.

I don't understand it.

Elon, you are an engineer. You are cutting 0.004 percent, while the Republicans are providing 455 times that in a tax break and you are not touching the main budget of 13 percent of the Pentagon.

I have a proposal for you. You can either come to Congress to explain this chart while you are going after 0.004 percent or USAID, which is 0.7 percent, as opposed to going to the 13 percent of the Pentagon budget while you are allowing tax breaks of 455 times more than the savings you are finding at DOGE--YOU can either come to Congress or you can go to Jon Stewart.

Jon Stewart called you out and said: Why not, if you want to cut waste, cut the Pentagon defense contract budget? Why not cut the fossil fuel subsidies? Why not cut the drug manufacturers who are ripping off the government?

Let's talk math about how you get actual cuts because right now you are cutting 0.004 percent while not going after any of the real ``holy cows'' in our government.

Mr. Speaker, the Republican budget calls for a trillion dollars in Medicaid cuts to pay for tax breaks for the very wealthy.

Mr. Speaker, 83 percent of the tax breaks go to 1 percent of Americans. What do these Medicaid cuts mean? It means the closure of hospitals and seniors denied coverage in long-term care.

Elon Musk talks about reducing deficits, but this bill would add $2.8 trillion to the deficit, taking it to $24.9 trillion.

Here is what is going on in the Republican family: While Musk and DOGE scrounge around for change under the couch, Speaker Johnson is running the credit card, bankrupting our Nation.

They are taking away your Medicaid to line the pockets of the wealthiest Americans who are controlling our government.

Mr. Speaker, President Trump campaigned around the country to drain the swamp. Yet, one of the first things he did was to reverse President Biden's executive order that banned White House officials from accepting gifts from lobbyists.

Today, I am introducing the Drain the Swamp Act. It is pretty simple. It will ban any White House official from accepting gifts from lobbyists, and it will ban White House officials from becoming lobbyists during the Trump term.

I believe that this bill will have support not just from progressives, not just from Independents, but from the MAGA movement. That is why I am calling on my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, to pass the Drain the Swamp Act and send it to President Trump's desk so that he can fulfill his promise.

Deprivation of Medicare Telehealth Services

Mr. Speaker, the Trump administration is stripping millions of American seniors of their coverage of telehealth on March 31. That is right. Starting March 31, doctors' visits via videoconference or Zoom or phone will no longer be covered for seniors on Medicare.

This is going to impact over 12 million Americans, and the crazy thing is that the inspectors general have found that there is only 0.2 percent of fraud in telehealth. Why are we taking telehealth away from millions of seniors who are homebound or who have difficulty leaving their homes? It is most devastating for rural Americans.

That is why I am introducing today the Telehealth Coverage Act. It will require Medicare to pay for telehealth services. Let us pass this act in a bipartisan way so that millions of American seniors aren't deprived of telehealth services because of the actions of the Trump administration.

Mr. Speaker, not since Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus at the height of the Civil War has a President defied the United States Supreme Court. Yet, Vice President Vance has called for President Trump to fire every civil servant in the administrative State. When the courts stop you, Vice President Vance said, go like Andrew Jackson did and say the Court has made its ruling, now try to enforce it.

Perhaps the Vice President doesn't know the history that Andrew Jackson's defiance of the Supreme Court led to the forcible removal of Native Americans and the Trail of Tears and shame for the country. It is black letter law.

Vice President Vance should go back to Yale Law School where both of us studied. Article II has the President administering the law. Article III has the Courts saying what the law is. That has been the bipartisan consensus that even Richard Nixon understood. It is dangerous for him to call on the President to defy the Supreme Court.

Mr. Speaker, 88 years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt stood before the American people in Philadelphia and warned of an economic aristocracy that sought to dominate not just our markets but our democracy.

He spoke of those who amassed great wealth and then used that wealth to shape the laws of our Nation to serve their own worldview rather than the public good. He pledged that the government must serve the people, not the privileged few.

That same challenge exists today, but now it is billionaires themselves taking over our government. They bankroll the campaigns, install their loyalists, and want to control government so they can make the rules.

They push for deep cuts to public education, including eliminating funding for decent schools in working-class neighborhoods to fund massive tax breaks for the investor class that we cannot afford.

They fight to deregulate social media platforms to grow the market value of companies in my district just as the railroad barons of the past fought against every piece of regulation to protect their profits.

They move fast and break things, treating our government like their own personal experiment, blind to the millions of Americans who rely on its services.

Why? Because they believe they are entitled to rule. They see themselves as an aristocracy of talent, a select few whose wealth and success make them the rightful decisionmakers for the rest of us.

In their eyes, business entrepreneurs, hedge fund managers, and tech tycoons are the engines of America's prosperity, while working families are expected to accept whatever scraps trickle down.

They believe that democracy should cater to their vision, their profits, and their power no matter what the cost to society. They even refuse to accept what separates human beings from God: mortality itself.

We must ask ourselves: Will we allow a handful of powerful interests to dictate the future of our economy, our jobs, and our democracy, or will we reclaim the promise of an America where anyone who works hard can thrive?

That is our task in this generation: to rebuild an economy that works for the many, not just for the mighty; to invest in American production, empower workers to share in the wealth they create, and ensure that people, not financial power, determine our Nation's course.

It is up to us to make good on the radical American belief that our genius lies in ordinary Americans, defying a world history in which national glory belonged only to kings, oligarchs, or politburos.

America's distinguishing excellence, unlike Russia or China, is our belief in the boundless potential of every citizen.

Today, our government must stand up against the impersonal economic forces that have snatched away livelihoods from those working in factory towns and concentrated wealth into a few cities.

Our government must make economic independence possible for citizens so they can assert control over their destiny.

Just as Franklin Delano Roosevelt stood up to the economic royalists of his time, we must stand up today to the unholy alliance of wealth and power not out of resentment but out of resolve, not to punish wealth but to ensure that prosperity is built by and for the people who make this country run.

Mr. Speaker, that is our mission. This is our moment. Let us make sure that together we meet it and believe in the American people again.

Mr. Speaker, NBC News is reporting that President Trump plans to eliminate the Department of Education with an executive order. This is an assault on every young American who went to public school like me.

This is an assault on every American family who has someone who is disabled and needs the IDEA program to provide education. This is an assault on every neighborhood in America that has a public school that gets title I funding. This is an assault on every child who gets school lunches in America.

This is an assault on our public teachers across this country. This is an assault on every American who has gotten any Federal financial aid to go to vocational school or to go to public college or to get an education like I did.

The President does not have the Constitutional authority to do this. It is cruelty. It is taking away the bedrock of education in this country.

Thomas Jefferson said that you can't have a democracy without an educated citizenry. What built America, what made us exceptional, is that we allowed Americans to go and finish high school before World War II while the Europeans didn't. Mr. Speaker, America had a record of 80 percent high school graduations compared to 20 and 30 percent in the European nations.

President Trump wants to take all of that away, snatching money from our public schools, snatching money from our teachers, and snatching money from our families who have kids who need the help.

Mr. Speaker, we need to rise up and oppose this blatantly unconstitutional executive order. We need to stand up for public education in America.

Opposing Tariffs on Food Products

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose Donald Trump's reckless tariffs on food products.

I am for strategic tariffs to protect our strategic industries in steel, aluminum, and semiconductors and our national champions.

We know, from Hamilton to Paul Krugman, that tariffs work for infant industries and important national industries, but who thinks we need tariffs for Corona beer? Who thinks we need tariffs for vegetables?

Here is what we get from Mexico. We get 85 percent of our strawberries from Mexico. Donald Trump put a 25 percent tariff on it. We get 86 percent of our tomatoes from Mexico. Donald Trump put a 25 percent tariff on it. We get 69 percent of vegetable imports from Mexico. We get 90 percent of our avocados from Mexico. Donald Trump put a 25 percent tariff on it.

So much for lowering grocery prices, Mr. Trump. You want Americans to pay 25 percent more for their avocados, for their strawberries, for their beer. In what world does this economic nonsense make any logical sense?

Then, you caved to the President of Mexico, President Sheinbaum and caved to Prime Minister Trudeau because you saw the stock market dip.

How about you stop paying attention to the stock market and start paying attention to people's grocery bills?

We are in dangerous times where we have a President who could impose these tariffs on food at any moment. That is why retailers are already raising prices. They don't believe Trump in terms of a 30-day pause. They are raising the prices on all of these food products today.

We need to be very clear, Mr. Trump: Learn Economics 101. Stop raising grocery prices for ordinary Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on the floor of Congress to speak out against the ban on TikTok that will take place in 6 days, on January 19. I call on President Biden and President-elect Trump to put a pause on this ban so 170 million Americans don't lose their free speech. Millions of Americans' livelihoods will be ended if this ban takes place.

We need to be for free speech. We can protect Americans' data, we can protect us from foreign interference on algorithms, but we should not ban TikTok. I call on others to join me in standing up for free speech and opposing this TikTok ban.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Schrier for her leadership, Representative Carter for working across the aisle, and the leadership for bringing this bill on the floor for a vote.

I join Representative Carter in thanking Paris Hilton and her husband, Carter, both up in the gallery as we speak. They really helped drive this and start this.

I had coffee with Carter 4 years ago, and we were talking about technology in my district. At the end of it, he says, ``By the way, I am married to Paris Hilton,'' like you just drop that at the end of a conversation.

I said: Paris Hilton. Okay. That is interesting.

Then he said: There is this issue I want to talk about.

I thought: Here we go. Here is some celebrity issue, and the person will fly in, do PR, and leave.

I said: Carter, what is it?

He talked about the institutional facilities, these congregate care facilities and the thousands of American kids who go there hoping to get assistance, hoping to get support, and instead face sexual abuse, horrific discipline, conditions where they aren't given enough food.

He said: You know, Paris went through that.

I was immediately struck by his vulnerability in sharing that. Then I met Paris, I met her mother, and I saw the emotion that she had. I also met so many survivors who told their stories. Representative Carter knows this. Paris and Carter, her husband, and these survivors came to our offices again and again for years because they

wanted to do something with these experiences to make it better for America's children.

We are often so polarized in this Chamber. We disagree sometimes on, it seems like, everything. As we approach Christmas and approach these holidays, I think we can feel good that when it comes to America's children, we put them first. We did something right. We did something to help the American people, and we did that because of the commitment and leadership that Paris and so many survivors have shown.

I feel good today about being a Member of Congress, working with Representative Carter, and proud of being part of this institution. I appreciate the leadership for allowing this bill to come. I hope it will pass unanimously.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Ranking Member Smith for his leadership. Also I want to thank Chair Rogers who has conducted the committee with bipartisanship. I got to travel with him, and he is fun to travel with.

My opposition here is not with disrespect to either the chairman or the ranking member.

As people know, I have been concerned about the Pentagon budget getting almost to $1 trillion, and I am concerned about the five primes and the

amount of cost overruns they have had; when you look at the F-35s and Lockheed, a contract that has been delayed, that has almost $200 billion in cost overruns; when you look at the IG report about Boeing getting $150,000 for soap dispensers; when you look at the reports about electric breast pumps being charged to our military for $1,400 when in other places you can get it for $200.

There is a lot of waste in this budget, and my hope is, actually, with the committee that we will engage with Elon Musk and engage with DOGE on this issue to have a Pentagon budget that is going to be more modernized, where the American people will get their value of their tax dollars, where we can have more competition for the five primes and have a strong national security with a lower budget.

I hope we can do that in a bipartisan way. My hope is that Musk, what he did with SpaceX in disrupting Lockheed and Boeing, with the ULA maybe finds areas that we can disrupt other five primes. I will oppose and vote ``no'' on this budget with the hope that next year we can find cost savings.

Mr. Speaker, across our land, there is outrage at private health insurance companies that are denying claims: denying claims for heart disease, denying claims for cancer, denying claims for diabetes.

Mr. Speaker, the average cancer patient in America will lose their entire life savings in 2 years. Forty-two percent of Americans who have cancer lose their life savings in 2 years. Mr. Speaker, 18 percent of Americans have had their healthcare claims denied, over 3.4 million Americans.

On a very small matter, I had my healthcare claim denied by UnitedHealthcare when I wanted to get a $100 nasal pump for allergies. Back it came: denied. I couldn't get that reversed. Imagine people with more serious problems.

One of the people in my district, Sarah Broughton, died of a sinus infection because her health insurance companies denied her claims for basic healthcare.

As Americans face denial after denial after denial, what is happening with these private insurance companies? Let me tell you: $1.4 trillion in revenue, $70 billion in profits for the top seven private insurance companies. They say, oh, it is only 5 percent profit, but it is $1.4 trillion sucked out of our economy while basic Americans are denied healthcare.

What is this money going to? It is going to administrative costs. It is going to advertising. It is going to bloated executive pay salaries while we can't give people treatment for cancer, for diabetes, for basic health issues.

The American people are outraged, and they are rising up across our country, demanding fundamental change to a broken healthcare system. Enough.

Here are three things that we could do: First, if a doctor prescribes a medicine, the private insurance company must cover it if Medicare covers it. That is common sense.

Second, let us cap out-of-pocket costs so you don't have someone who has cancer depleting their entire life savings. Cap those costs at $2,000 a year.

Third, let us make sure that these private insurance companies can't rely on AI to have AI-generated algorithms that deny claims. No AI used to deny Americans' claims.

Really, what we need, Mr. Speaker, is what so many other democracies have. We need Medicare for All. The reality is, the average American is paying more than $6,000 a year on healthcare costs, and those premiums are up 7 percent from last year. We are not going to get those premiums down. We are not going to get those healthcare costs down unless we have Medicare for All.

When we have Medicare for All, we will have 2 percent administrative fees. Medicare will be able to negotiate with the hospitals and the pharmaceutical companies to lower costs for all Americans and provide care.

Guess what. If we have Medicare for All, every doctor and every hospital will be in network. No more of these denied claims that are bankrupting Americans and taking people's lives.

Mr. Speaker, I represent a district in Silicon Valley that has $12 trillion of value: Apple, Google, Nvidia, Tesla. We are producing more wealth in my ZIP Code than anyplace in human history. How is it that in the wealthiest nation in the world when we are producing more wealth than ever before, Americans can't get basic healthcare?

Healthcare is a human right. We have the money to make sure every American is covered and not denied. It is time for change. It is time to hold private health insurance companies accountable. It is time to fight and pass Medicare for All.