LEADER JEFFRIES: "HOUSE DEMOCRATS WILL CONTINUE TO EMPHASIZE HEALTHCARE, NOT WARFARE"
Today, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries joined Rep. Ayanna Pressley for a roundtable and press conference on the Healthcare Not Warfare Day of Action, where they discussed the harmful impacts of prioritizing entering a war of choice in the Middle East over ensuring healthcare is affordable for all Americans.
LEADER JEFFRIES: We gather on the 16th anniversary of the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, life-sustaining, life-changing and life-saving legislation. That's the type of thing that we in Congress should be doing to make life better for the American people. Unfortunately, Republicans, led by President Trump and those Republicans in the House and the Senate, have chosen not to make policy progress but to inflict policy violence on the American people in areas like healthcare and access to healthy food.
In the One Big Ugly Bill, Republicans enacted the largest cut to Medicaid in American history, literally ripping healthcare away from more than 14 million Americans, including our elders. And in that same toxic bill, Republicans enacted the largest cut to nutritional assistance in American history, a $186 billion cut to SNAP, ripping food away from children, from veterans and from hungry seniors in order to give massive tax breaks to their billionaire donors and, at the same period of time, create a $75 billion slush fund to unleash masked and untrained, violent ICE agents to brutalize and kill American citizens, like Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, or violently target law-abiding immigrants families. That's policy violence and a priority choice that Republicans have made. And now, on top of the One Big Ugly Bill, Republican extremists have chosen to plunge this country into a reckless war of choice and spend billions of dollars to drop bombs in the Middle East without any justification that has been articulated to the American people while cutting healthcare and being unwilling to find a dime to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits.
We're here to make clear, and this roundtable will further equip us as we go back to Washington to emphasize healthcare, not warfare, and to make clear to the American people the types of toxic policy choices that Republicans have chosen to make and our commitment as Democrats to push back aggressively against it. In closing, we believe as Democrats that in this great country of ours, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, access to high-quality healthcare, to primary care, to services at community-based health centers, can't simply be a privilege available only to the wealthy, the well-off and the well-connected. Access to high-quality and affordable healthcare should be a right that is available to everyone, which is why we will continue to emphasize healthcare, not warfare.
Full press availability can be watched here.