{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/barrasso-blasts-democrats-plan-to-extend-wasteful-biden-covid-bonus-payments/", "Barrasso Blasts Democrats\u2019 Plan to Extend Wasteful Biden COVID Bonus Payments", "2025-12-04", "2025", "2025-12", "Republican", "Senate", "WY", "John Barrasso", "B001261", "www.barrasso.senate.gov", "barrasso", "https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/newsroom/news-releases/", "scraper", "\u201cAnd on one side of the aisle, you have Democrats protecting a broken system with no plan to lower costs. On this side of the aisle, we have Republicans who are fighting to give people what they\u2019ve wanted all along: the care they need, from the doctor they choose, at a price they can afford.\u201d\n\nWASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Senate Majority Whip, today spoke on the Senate Floor slamming the Senate Democrats\u2019 proposal for a three-year extension without any changes of the wasteful and fraud-ridden Biden COVID Bonus Payments.\n\nClick HERE to watch Senator Barrasso\u2019s remarks.\n\nSen. Barrasso\u2019s remarks as delivered:\n\n\u201cYou just heard the Minority Leader \u2013 came to the Floor \u2013 and he said that Democrats want three-year extensions \u2013 three full years \u2013 for Biden\u2019s COVID Bonus Payments with absolutely no change to the law. Not a single reform to deal with the waste, the fraud, the abuse, and the corruption of these payments and of Obamacare. Not a single one. They want to send billions of dollars \u2013 actually it\u2019s likely to be $100 billion \u2013 directly from the U.S. Treasury to insurance companies. Some insurance companies are highly profitable, and that\u2019s their position. Just send more U.S. dollars to insurance companies. Maybe just do a direct transfer of money. Should I remind \u2013 does he need to be reminded \u2013 that the COVID problems are over? But they want to send another hundred billion dollars of Biden COVID Bonus Payments directly to insurance companies.\n\n\u201cRemember, the Democrats shut down the government in the United States for 43 days because of healthcare, because of Obamacare. Actually, they wanted, at one point, to give money to illegal immigrants for healthcare. That was part of their demand \u2013 free healthcare for immigrants. Shut down the government. Deny the American people services they need, transportation, all of those things. The damage they did to the economy. The damage they did to the country by forcing the American people 43 days of the politics of pain. And now the ongoing pain of having to live under Obamacare with this failed healthcare system that we\u2019re living with today.\n\n\u201cObamacare is a program that undermined healthcare in America. Democrats say they want to talk about Obamacare, so let\u2019s talk about what\u2019s happened for the last 15 years.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m a doctor. I practiced medicine for 24 years in Wyoming before coming to the United States Senate. The Democrats refuse to tell the American people \u2013 refuse to even admit it to themselves, living in denial \u2013 that Obamacare is broken, and it broke healthcare in America. Obamacare is a failure. Obamacare is unaffordable. Let me point out not a single Republican voted for Obamacare, not one. Premiums for people on Obamacare have gone up over 220 percent since Obamacare became law 15 years ago. For people that have Obamacare, their deductibles have doubled. A family of four now pays $10,000 more for the coverage today than it did before Obamacare. Competition for selling insurance in the United States has collapsed. In rural counties \u2013 my home state of Wyoming, your state, Mr. President, of Oklahoma \u2013 people lost so many of the options they had to buy insurance. The insurance providers have dried up. Today, many counties are left with one provider only for people to buy from. Some counties have none. Rural hospitals are struggling. More than a hundred rural hospitals have closed since Obamacare became law. Hundreds more are at risk because of the devastating effect of Obamacare on healthcare in our nation.\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s go back and recall what President Obama told the nation as he was promoting Obamacare \u2013 and every one of the Democrats voted for it, every single one of them. He said, remember, \u2018If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.\u2019 He said, \u2018If you like your policy, you can keep your policy.\u2019 These are the things that the President of the United States told the American people when Barack Obama was in the White House. He even went on to say \u2013 probably the biggest lie of all \u2013 he said, your insurance premiums would go down by $2,500 a year for families. Every single one of these was a lie. The American people see it. Even The New York Times said, \u2018Obamacare is pricey.\u2019 They said that about a month ago. The Washington Post said, \u2018Obamacare was never affordable.\u2019 These aren\u2019t my words. These are the words of The New York Times and The Washington Post.\n\n\u201cSo how do Democrats continue to cover up the failure? To continue to mislead the American people? Tried to do it with government subsidies. They tried to cover up the failures of Obamacare with government-paid subsidies, not to the American people, but directly to the insurance company. When they find out that those subsidies weren\u2019t enough, what did they do to the juicy subsidies that weren\u2019t carrying the day? They said, let\u2019s add new subsidies on top of it, which is what they\u2019re talking about extending \u2013 those new, juicier subsidies. Today, they want to extend those for three more years. They put them in place during COVID \u2013 called the Biden COVID Bonus subsidies. Now they want to make them permanent. They want to go for three years now, but they\u2019ve been talking about trying to do this permanent. They want the American people to have the Treasury of the United States send more money to insurance companies as the costs of healthcare continue to climb.\n\n\u201cWhen Biden was President, Democrats created these Biden COVID Bonuses, new subsidies, added on top to prop up Obamacare because it was falling. Obamacare was toppling. Democrats said, we can\u2019t have this. Hundreds of billions of more dollars to insurance companies. Let\u2019s be very clear. The money does not go to the American people. It is mainlined straight from the U.S. Government Treasury into the bank accounts of big insurance companies. The American people, the consumers, are cut out of the equation. American consumers have no way to say how the money is spent, and they need to have a voice in this. You have the government writing big checks. There\u2019s no incentive to control costs, zero incentive to compete, and as a result, insurance companies continue to raise premiums as high as they want, and their profits continue to go up. These increases aren\u2019t because the Biden COVID Bonuses are expiring, although that\u2019s what the Democrats are trying to say. Remember, Democrats chose the date of expiring of these subsidies when they put into this law in 2022. That\u2019s what they did. They had the House. They had the Senate. They had the White House. They said, we\u2019re going to put more money in. But even they realized that COVID was going to be done by the end of this year, so they set this up as the expiring date. Now they realize, \u2018Oh no, Obamacare continues to topple over, we need to prop it up with more government money to insurance companies.\u2019\n\n\u201cNow, the end of these Biden COVID Bonuses explain about 4 percent of next year\u2019s projected 20 percent spike in insurance premiums. These huge premium increases explain why the stock prices of insurance companies have soared from 500 to 1,000 percent since Obamacare became law. That\u2019s what we\u2019re seeing. That\u2019s the reality of this. Big insurance companies, not the American people, are who the Democrats continue to support financially.\n\n\u201cDemocrats created a system with zero accountability. Now they want to extend this broken system with these additional subsidies for another three years with zero reforms. Nothing! Not going after the waste, not going after the fraud, not going after the abuse. Oh, no, the Democrats are happy paying massive subsidies, and for everybody \u2013 for people making over a quarter of a million a year, for people making over half a million dollars a year. Nope, keep sending the money over to the insurance companies for all their rich, fat-cat friends.\n\n\u201cThe Biden COVID Bonuses are not improving patient care. I will tell you that as a doctor. For every taxpayer dollar spent on these subsidies, Americans believe they get about 34 cents-worth of value. So where does the rest of the money go? Waste, fraud, abuse, and, yes, corruption. How do we know there\u2019s corruption? Well, last year, the American people filed over 200,000 complaints with the federal government about that specific thing. They complained because they were unknowingly signed up or switched into Obamacare plans \u2013 things they didn\u2019t choose, they didn\u2019t want, they didn\u2019t ask for. And those are 200,000 that complained. How many more were there that either didn\u2019t know about it or didn\u2019t know enough or didn\u2019t know who to complain to? Insurers signed up individuals for insurance plans, and they didn\u2019t even know they had them.\n\n\u201cThe Biden COVID Bonuses are an expensive, fraud-ridden failure, and the Democrats want to extend them for another three years. Continuing to pour billions of dollars more into the pockets of big insurance companies without meaningful protection against fraud will not lower costs of healthcare. It will not help the American people.\n\n\u201cRepublicans believe Americans deserve high-quality, affordable care. That\u2019s not what people have gotten under Obamacare, not at all. Republicans believe taxpayer dollars should go directly to hardworking people, not to the big insurance companies. Give buying power to the people. Let people make decisions. I trust the American people. We want to empower Americans to make their own decisions about everything, about healthcare certainly, about their own families and what the needs are for their families, what\u2019s right for them.\n\n\u201cSo there\u2019s a clear divide, Mr. President, between the Democrats and Republicans on healthcare. And on one side of the aisle, you have the Democrats protecting a broken system with not a single plan to lower costs. On this side of the aisle, we have Republicans who are fighting to give people what they wanted all along: the care they need, from a doctor they choose, at a price they can afford.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/barrasso-blasts-democrats-plan-to-extend-wasteful-biden-covid-bonus-payments/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8641141466796398, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}