Pelosi on the Republican Tax Scam: "One of the Largest Transfers of Wealth in our History."
Washington, D.C. – Today, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi voted NO on the Republican Tax Scam bill: Donald Trump’s extreme legislation that will kick nearly 14 million people off their health care, take food out of the mouths of hungry kids and raise costs for health care and groceries across the board.
For more than 29 hours, Speaker Emerita Pelosi and fellow House Democrats led sustained opposition to the Republican Tax Scam bill. Democrats offered hundreds of amendments to stop Republican cuts to health care and food assistance and to remove new tax breaks that Republicans are giving to their billionaire donors like Elon Musk.
Watch Speaker Emerita Pelosi's Floor remarks in opposition to the bill here.
Watch Speaker Emerita Pelosi's interview with Jen Psaki on MSNBC here.
Watch Speaker Emerita Pelosi's interview with Raj Mathai on NBC Bay Area here.
Read the transcript of Speaker Emerita Pelosi's Floor remarks below:
Ranking Member Jim McGovern. I'd like to yield two minutes to the gentlewoman from California, the Speaker Emerita, Ms. Pelosi.
Speaker Emerita Pelosi. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his exceptional leadership, and to all the members of the Rules Committee for your stamina and for your values.
Mr. Speaker, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death.' He went on to talk about access to health care as a right.
But the inequality and inhumanity of this bill is exactly what Republicans have in store for the American people.
I sat for five hours at the Rules Committee—some of you were there even longer. It was stiff competition to determine which provision was the worst. But let’s just talk for a moment about work requirements.
They said, with great pride: 'If you have a seven-year-old child, you have to go to work.' A seven-year-old child is a little child.
I recalled a conversation I had with some moms. One of them said: 'If there’s a work requirement tied to Medicaid, this is what it means for me: If my child is sick, I can't go to work because I can’t afford childcare. If I miss work, I miss pay—and I can’t afford to miss that pay. If I don’t go to work, I can be fired. So I’m forced to put my sick child on the school bus—because I need to go to work to keep my Medicaid.'
And as we mentioned, about the silencers, it's just beyond comprehension in terms of safety for our children.
Because of the Republicans’ tax bill scam, millions of American families—seniors, veterans, vulnerable children, people with disabilities—will lose their health care. Rural hospitals will be closed. And millions of jobs will be destroyed across America.
And all of this to give another massive tax cut to the richest people in America.
It is a Republican Robin Hood in reverse: one of the largest transfers of wealth from working families to the rich that our country has ever seen.
I urge a ‘no’ vote on the rule and the bill.