Schatz: Trump Has Billions To Bail Out Argentina, But Nothing For People Whose Health Care Costs Are About To Spike

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai'i) today spoke on the Senate floor and called on Republicans to work with Democrats to reopen the government and stop health care costs from rising for millions of people.

"Trump has enough money for a $50 billion tariff bailout. There's enough money for Argentina, but there's not enough money for you. They don't have enough money to help a family of four that's going to have to pay $300 more per month to keep their health care plan. They have the money to cover for Trump's economic incompetence, but apparently they don't have the money to prevent a small business owner, or a taxi driver, or an early retiree from losing their health care," said Senator Schatz.

A transcript of Senator Schatz's remarks can be found below. Video is available here.

Donald Trump is sending $20 billion to America? No, not to Americans. To Argentina. Donald Trump is sending $20 billion to Argentina to bail out their economy, and he wants to spend $50 billion to clean up the mess that he made by starting a trade war that crushed American soybean producers.

And let's be clear about what happened. It's not that that market is temporarily suspended. That market, in some cases, is gone. And during this period of time $20 billion for the country of Argentina and $50 billion for a tariff bailout. Americans are paying more for absolutely everything. Health care premiums for tens of millions of people are going to go up by a lot. Not 10 percent. Not 20 percent. Not 50 percent. 114 percent. 24 million Americans, 114 percent.

Now, the bailout for Argentina is particularly absurd. Argentina is not a key security or economic partner. It is an economy that is in such dire shape that there's no guarantee that we will ever get our money back. It is a terrible investment any way you look at it, under any circumstances, but certainly in the context of Americans seeing their health care premiums increased by 114 percent right now.

You then have a separate bailout for American soybean producers totaling close to $50 billion. And why? Because of the tariffs. Because in one fell swoop, they wiped out half of the export market for American soybeans in China. And there's no way you can plug that gap. You can't come up with - I don't know what it would be - a 112 individual deals to kind of add up to the market buying power of the PRC. When you lose a buyer that also happens to be the biggest country of the world, you don't have a lot of options. At best, it's going to take you months or years to cut dozens of smaller deals, and it's not going to add up.

So just to recap, Trump is at the exact same time incinerating $70 billion of taxpayer money. But what's the one thing that there's not enough money for you? There's not enough money for you. There's enough money for a $50 billion tariff bailout. There's enough money for Argentina, but there's not enough money for you. They don't have enough money to help a family of four that's going to have to pay $300 more per month to keep their health care plan. They have the money to cover for Trump's economic incompetence, but apparently they don't have the money to prevent a small business owner, or a taxi driver or an early retiree from losing their health care. This is not complicated at all.

Donald Trump's economy is already hard as it is, because of his choices to create shortages of electricity, of lumber, of food, of health care. Electricity prices are going up at twice the rate of inflation. Vegetables are up nearly 40 percent. Grocery prices are at their highest in three years, and now people are supposed to find hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to spare. Every single month or give up their health care coverage and hope they don't get sick.

We could end this shutdown right now if Republicans sat down and worked with us to protect people's health care. By the way, the people who are being particularly hurt by these health care premium increases live in Republican states. Now, that shouldn't matter. But we are in politics and just understand we're standing here fighting for your constituents. If we were a little more cynical, we would let you stew in the most unpopular major legislation that has been passed in generations. But we want to solve this problem for not just the 24 million people on the so-called exchange, but for everybody who's about to see their premiums spike. Let's sit down and fix this.

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