WASHINGTON — As the Senate grapples with the “one, big, beautiful bill” to enact President Donald Trump’s agenda, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., gave it a new moniker Wednesday: The We’re All Going to Die Bill.
The Senate Democrats' leader was referencing a statement from Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, at a town hall last week where she dismissed a constituent’s concern about health care coverage cuts from the legislation by saying "well, we all are going to die.”
“The more you look at the House bill, the worse it gets,” Schumer said during a press conference Wednesday, two hours after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated Trump’s big bill will cut taxes by $3.7 trillion, add $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit and lead to 10.9 million people losing their health insurance by 2034.
Schumer said revised numbers from the CBO could increase the number of people without health insurance to 16 million people if the bill, as approved by House Republicans last month, is passed.
“Even Medicare is under the knife,” Schumer said, because the legislation includes a trigger for $500 billion in cuts to the federal health insurance program for people age 65 or older. As of April, about 67 million people in the United States were enrolled in Medicare.
“This is health care across the board,” he said. “It is Medicaid. It is the Affordable Care Act. It is private insurance, which is going to skyrocket. It’s everything that is terrible.”
Last week, at a town hall in Iowa, Ernst responded to a comment from a consituent that people would die without health care coverage by saying “people are not ... well, we all are going to die.”
Later, the Iowa Republican attempted to defend herself in a social media video, proclaiming "I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth. So, I apologize."
"I'm really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the Tooth Fairy as well," she added.
As currently written, the big, beautiful bill seeks to extend the individual income tax breaks enacted during Trump’s first term in 2017 and add new ones, including no taxes on tips. To help cover the lost revenue, the bill adds new work requirements for some adults up to age 65, and new verification requirements, for people to receive Medicaid starting next year.
About 71 million low-income Americans are currently enrolled in Medicaid, according to the program.
“With this bill, tens of millions who would otherwise qualify for health care benefits would be mummified in new red tape, shortened enrollment periods, higher premiums and weaker coverage,” Schumer said. “People will fall through the cracks and get phased out of coverage in the coming years. It’s death by a thousand paper cuts. That’s the intention of the Republican bill.”
While the big, beautiful bill passed in the House last month by a vote of 215 to 214, with all House Democrats opposing the legislation, its future in the Senate is less certain. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has said he opposes the bill because it will raise the federal debt by trillions. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has also expressed concerns about its Medicaid work requirements.