WASHINGTON, May 22, CMC – Caribbean-American Democratic Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke on Thursday strongly condemned the Republican Party’s passage of President Donald Trump’s signature policy agenda in House of Representatives early Thursday.
“While the American people slept, Republicans passed the largest cut to healthcare in our nation’s history,” Clarke, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC). “Their Big Ugly Bill is an attack on their own constituents, it is an attack on children, veterans, the disabled, and our most vulnerable, and it is an attack on the less fortunate, all in the name of serving the ultra-rich.
“Americans are not falling for Republican propaganda about so-called waste and fraud,” added the representative for the 9th Congressional District in Brooklyn, New York, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus. “This was a ruse to rip medicine out of the hands of sick children to fund tax breaks for their obscenely wealthy puppet masters. And the audacity of my colleagues across the aisle to pretend otherwise is nothing but an insult.”
Clarke said House Democrats “stood in the breach and voted unanimously against this villainous scheme, but the combined efforts of a sadistic GOP (Grand Old Party – Republicans) and the pressure campaign of their despicable president pushed their assault over the edge.
“As a result, Americans nationwide are now waking up in fear for their lives and livelihoods,” she said.
The US House of Representatives voted early Thursday morning in narrowly passing, 215 to 214 votes, along party lines, Trump’s wide-ranging “Big, Beautiful Bill.”
The measure would, among other things, cut taxes, Medicaid, food aid, education and clean energy initiatives, and provide more funding for the military and border security.
Medicaid is a federal and state programme that provides health care coverage to qualified individuals, based on income and assets.
“We already knew House Republicans are utterly subservient to President Trump, but to see so many of them defy their own principles and on-the-record positions just to avoid the wrath of one man is simply shameful,” Clarke said. “At every step, they’ve aided and abetted his ruthless, careless and inhumane agenda of harm against the American people, all while blowing out the deficit they periodically pretend to care about.
“Truly, it is terrifying to witness just how willing House Republicans are to partake in the planned obsolescence of Congress as a co-equal branch of government,” she added, stating that she cannot stress enough “the devastating impacts this bill will have on hospitals and nursing homes around the country.
“Their lies and cruelty will cause detrimental consequences to the 14 million Americans who will now lose access to essential healthcare services, the millions of children and families who will now lose their SNAP benefits for food security, and the millions of women who now will lose access to the proper maternal healthcare they need just to survive,” the congresswoman continued.
“I pray the Senate sees this ridiculous and reprehensible bill for what it is, and takes a stand to stop it.”
Just prior to the bill’s passage, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who represents the 8th Congressional District, encompassing parts of Brooklyn and Queens in New York, envisaged that Republicans would pay for their votes in the mid-term elections.
“I think that when the story is told of the 119th Congress, when the votes are ultimately cast on that first Tuesday in November next year, that this day may very well turn out to be the day that House Republicans lost control of the United States,” he said.
But House Republican Speaker Mike Johnson was delighted in delivering Trump’s agenda.
“After a long week and a long night and countless hours of work over the past year, a lot of prayer and a lot of teamwork, my friends, it quite literally is morning in America,” he said early Thursday morning. “After four long years of President Biden’s failures, President Trump’s America First agenda is finally here, and we are advancing that today.”
In updating New Yorkers on Monday of the “harmful effects” of several healthcare provisions already passed by the US House of Representatives’ Ways & Means and Energy & Commerce committees for the Republican budget reconciliation bill, New York Governor Kathy Hochul warned that these provisions collectively amount to an annual loss of nearly US$13.5 billion for New Yorkers and the healthcare sector.
Hochul said the provisions, as currently written, would lead to “substantial changes in how the critical public insurance programmes Medicaid and the Essential Plan are funded and administered across the state.”
All told, the governor said the Republican bill would cause nearly 1.5 million New Yorkers to lose healthcare coverage and become uninsured.
US Senate Minority Leader Charles “Chuck” Schumer said, “This is as cruel and heartless as it gets. Trump and House Republicans want to kick 1.5 million New Yorkers off their health insurance and rip away US$13.5 billion from New York’s hospitals and healthcare economy, so they can have bigger tax breaks for billionaires and corporations.
“New House Republicans promised for months they would protect Medicaid, but now New Yorkers know the truth: they never intended to keep that promise, and this confirms it,” he said.
“This isn’t targeting waste and fraud; this is a rushed plan to bankroll Trump’s tax breaks for the ultra-rich paid for by ripping away healthcare for New Yorkers,” Schumer added. “Hospitals and nursing homes will shutter, premiums will go up, families will suffer, and health care workers will lose their jobs.”
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