Mr. President,
I come today to explain my vote yesterday for voting against the motion to proceed on this bill.
That's Republican Senator Tom Tillis speaking on the Senate floor last month.
He was explaining to his colleagues why he voted no on advancing President Trump's signature legislation,
his big, beautiful bill.
The problem, Tillis said, was the bill's extensive cuts to Medicaid.
So what do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid
because the funding's not fair?
Tillis wasn't alone in his concerns.
The bill's Medicaid provisions gave several key Republican senators pause.
But in the end, the president's bill passed by the narrowest of margins.
The bill is passed.
On July 4th, Trump signed it into law.
The final version slashes over $1 trillion in federal health care spending, mostly from Medicaid.
Now?
Patients and health care providers are puzzling through what those cuts could mean for them.
So the one big beautiful bill,
it represents the biggest cuts to federal health care spending and to Medicaid specifically in history.
That's our colleague, Dominique Mossbergen.
It's about one in five or about 70 million Americans are covered by Medicaid.