Chuck Schumer: ‘We Enter Another Week of Donald Trump’s Government Shutdown and Republicans Seem Happy Not to Work’

Schumer: “So, Mr. President, we enter another week of Donald Trump’s government shutdown, and Republicans seem happy not to work, happy not to negotiate, happy to let health care premiums spike for over 20 million working-and middle-class Americans. Our country is staring down the barrel of a health care catastrophe, and Republicans will spend this week either vacationing or holding pep rallies at the White House. It’s been over a month since the House of Representatives even took a single roll call vote. That’s shameful. That’s derelict. Government workers must work without getting paid, House Republicans get paid without working. What about the Democrats? Our position remains the same. We want to end the shutdown as soon as we can, and fix the ACA premium crisis that looms over 20 million hardworking Americans, and many tens of millions more whose premiums will also go up.

Look, the ACA premium crisis is not a fix-it-later issue, like Republicans keep pretending it is. It’s a fix-it-now issue, because very soon Americans are going to have to make some really difficult choices about which health care plan they choose for next year. When they see the amounts of money — when they see the increase in the number of dollars that these premiums will cost them because the tax credits expire, $500 a month, $600 a month, $1,000 a month, for older couples over $20,000 a month — they’re going to have to make an awful choice: do I cut out health care altogether and be left alone, or do I cut back on everything else to afford a health care plan? Do I have to look for a new plan with different doctors, different hospitals, higher co-pays, higher premiums?

Every American, just about every American, or so many Americans — tens of millions — are going to have to start making that choice the next month. Health insurance prices under the ACA are now available in about a dozen states, and Americans in those states are already seeing with their own eyes the horrifying truth we’ve been warning about for months: that multiple millions of people are going to pay tens of thousands of dollars more for health care, so vital to Americans. When you are in a family and you know you can’t provide health care for them, or a much reduced healthcare, and you look at your spouse, you look at your kids, you say, what am I going to do if they get sick? What a frightening experience for people that Republicans are putting America through, all because they wanted to cut all these — cut all this — cut Medicaid and cut so much else in health care to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. It’s just perverse. It’s inside out. It’s upside down.”