On Wednesday afternoon, Senator Reverend Warnock addressed the impact of proposed Republican cuts to Medicaid on ordinary Georgians

The press conference came hours after President Trump endorsed the House Republican budget plan, which includes scathing cuts to Medicaid and other programs that hard working Georgians rely on

Senator Reverend Warnock has long championed Medicaid protections and closing the health care coverage gap

Senator Reverend Warnock: “This is backward, it’s not only immoral it’s impractical, we’re making the American workforce sicker and weaker, […] we’ve got to straighten out this mess and center to the people”

Above: Senator Reverend Warnock during the Hands Off Medicaid press conference

Washington, D.C. – On Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA) outlined the dire impacts of potential Medicaid cuts on ordinary Georgians. The Senator pushed back on cuts to Medicaid and other key programs proposed by Washington politicians in the recent budget plan.

The proposed plans potentially set up deep cuts to Medicaid, threatening to shut down more rural hospitals, and rip away healthcare from some of the nation’s most vulnerable communities, including thousands of Georgia seniors and children.

“A budget is more than a fiscal document. It is also a moral document. Show me your budget and I’ll show you who you think matters, who’s in and who’s out, who you think is expendable, where your priorities are,” said Senator Reverend Warnock.

This is backward, it’s not only immoral it’s impractical, we’re making the American workforce sicker and weaker, […] we’ve got to straighten out this mess and center to the people,” Senator Reverend Warnock concluded.

The press conference was hosted by U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and also included U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR), Patty Murray (D-WA), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Peter Welch (D-VT), and Maggie Hassan (D-NH). The press conference is part of the Health Care Strike Team, created by Senate Democrats to push back on Republicans’ reconciliation efforts.

Senator Warnock has long championed efforts to expand affordable health care access, starting with his advocacy to close the health care coverage gap in Georgia. In addition to pushing for solutions to close the coverage gap, Senator Warnock led a delegation of Georgia lawmakers in urging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to provide tools to Medicaid non-expansion states like Georgia to help them protect health care access for Medicaid enrollees who lose eligibility after the end of the public health emergency declaration.

Watch Senator Warnock’s remarks HERE.

Below full remarks from Senator Warnock at press conference:

“A budget is more than a fiscal document. It is also a moral document. Show me your budget and I’ll show you who you think matters, who’s in and who’s out, who you think is expendable, where your priorities are.”

“As we take stock of what Washington Republicans are trying to do now, this budget, if it were an EKG (electrocardiogram), would suggest that Washington Republicans have a heart problem and that they are in need of moral surgery.”

“The consequences of the actions that they are trying to take in this moment hits into the lives of ordinary people. I think too often those of us who work in this space and those who cover us, sort of cover the politicians. And when the politics becomes about the politicians, we lose site of where and how this actually matters for ordinary people. What they’re trying to do is both immoral and impractical. I have been working in this health care fight for years, long before I decided to run for the United States Senate, I was fighting for health care in Georgia.”

“I remember when we passed the Affordable Care Act, how glad I was that that happened and I went into the Georgia Capitol and staged to sit-in in the governor’s office because that governor, and the next governor, and the governor after that have all refused to expand Medicaid in Georgia. It suggested that politicians have a heart problem.”

“Jesus said, ‘Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’ Dr. King, who pastored the church where I now serve, said that ‘Of all the injustices, inequality in health care is the most shocking and the most inhumane.’”

“They are busy trying to pass a tax cut for the wealthiest people in America, billionaires and millionaires, and they’re doing it on the backs of ordinary people. This cannot stand.”

“We will continue to hold unaccountable and we encourage all of our constituents to hold them accountable. And because I’ve been focused on this issue, glad now to serve on the finance committee under the great Ron Wyden and we’ll be focused on these issues. I got arrested in Georgia trying to get healthcare for folks. Staging a sit-in and in the governor’s office. In fact, I got arrested in this Capitol in 2017 when they were trying to do the same thing, pass the $2 trillion dollar tax cut at the expense of the poor and the farm bill at the expense of the children’s health care program, but I decided to move from being an agitator to a legislator, but we got to keep on agitating, even if it’s inside of these halls.”

“When I came to the Senate, I talked to all of my colleagues here in the Democratic Caucus and they agreed with me that we needed to provide Georgia and other non-expansion states some more incentives to expand. Remember, we got 14.2 billion for the non-expansion states to expand, $2 billion just for Georgia alone. You know what Georgia did? Georgia left that money on the table and left over 600,000 Georgians in the healthcare coverage gap.”

“Some got the message, North Carolina took those incentives and they expanded, a purple state, Kentucky expanded. Now they’re trying to go after these incentives. They want to go after the tax credits that will allow people to get health care and this has consequences on the lives of ordinary people. We’ve seen a dozen hospitals in Georgia close over the last decade, and those hospitals could be opened with paying customers if they could get access to Medicaid.”

“When I think about this, I often think about Heather Payne, who is a traveling nurse from Dalton, Georgia. Georgia has a health care program, if you want to call it that. That has not enrolled 10,000 people yet. Heather Payne is one of those people stuck in the gap. That’s why my colleagues pointed out, very often we talk about Medicaid expansion, we’re talking about the working poor, people who work every single day. Heather Payne is a traveling nurse who was taking care of patients even during COVID, and then because she was a traveling nurse, some days she had health care, sometimes she didn’t have health care. She wasn’t poor enough to get conventional Medicaid and the programs that she was eligible for would cost between 500 and $1,000 a month, it was too much.”

“One day she realized that something was happening in her body. She knew something wasn’t right, but she didn’t have enough money to see what it was, and finally, she saved enough money of her own cash to finally go and see a neurologist. And the neurologist said, you’ve actually had a series of mini-strokes that require additional care. And so here she is, she needs additional care, but she doesn’t have health care. And so she’s literally caught up in the gap between the refusal of a state of Georgia to expand Medicaid and these onerous work requirements in states like Georgia. She’s sick, too sick to work, and she’s being asked to prove that she can work, or that she is working, so that she can get health care.”

“Why’d they give Elon Musk and people like him a tax cut? Let me put this in perspective, in closing, and nobody believes a Baptist preacher when he says ‘In closing’, I was proud that we got $14 billion to help these states to expand Medicaid. Elon Musk has got $18 billion in incentives from our federal government. And he’s the one who’s telling us that the rest of us need to tighten our belts.”

“This is backwards, it’s not only immoral it’s and impractical, we’re making the American workforce sicker and weaker, which I think ultimately is a national security issue, and so we’ve got a straighten out this mess and center to the people. People like Heather Payne, who’s waiting right in this very moment to get the health care she deserves.”

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