{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/barrasso-slams-schumer-plan-to-prop-up-obamacare/", "Barrasso Slams Schumer Plan to Prop Up Obamacare", "2025-11-08", "2025", "2025-11", "Republican", "Senate", "WY", "John Barrasso", "B001261", "www.barrasso.senate.gov", "barrasso", "https://www.barrasso.senate.gov/newsroom/news-releases/", "scraper", "\u201cThe American people deserve a full debate about the unaffordability of Obamacare. Senator Schumer\u2019s offer does nothing to address the cost of healthcare, does nothing to lower premiums, does nothing to reassure the American people. All it does is make insurance companies richer and taxpayers poorer. And that is why it\u2019s dead on arrival.\u201d\n\nWASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Senate Majority Whip, today slammed the dead-on-arrival offer from Senate Democrats to end the Schumer Shutdown. Senator Barrasso criticized Democrats for holding government funding hostage in exchange for a $30 billion payment to insurance companies that would keep the Biden COVID Bonuses flowing.\n\nClick HERE to watch Senator Barrasso\u2019s remarks.\n\nSen. Barrasso\u2019s remarks as delivered:\n\n\u201cYesterday, Chuck Schumer, the Minority Leader of the United States Senate, came to the Floor with his most recent ransom note. Of course, it wasn\u2019t serious. It was dead on arrival. Senator Schumer is demanding that the U.S. government send a check directly to the insurance companies of America to the tune of tens and tens and tens of billions of dollars. Right from the government, main lined into the bank accounts of the insurance companies of America.\n\n\u201cChuck Schumer actually cuts the American people, the taxpayers, out of the process. The people who are waiting for food, the people who are waiting for paychecks, the people who are protecting us \u2013 he cuts them out completely. Nope, direct money, Chuck Schumer, from the U.S. government, into the bank accounts of the insurance companies of America. Think about it. Direct payment from the U.S. government to insurance companies, and the American people having absolutely nothing to say about how that money is spent. That\u2019s what Chuck Schumer wants. No accountability.\n\n\u201cWhat he said is if Republicans will not send that $30 billion to insurance companies \u2013 and it may be more than that if you do all the calculations \u2013 the Democrats are ready to keep the government closed. No paychecks. No food stamps. No military getting paid. Nothing. This is a true reflection of the failure of Obamacare.\n\n\u201cSince Obamacare was passed by Democrats \u2013 and not a single Republican voted for it in the House or the Senate, Democrats alone \u2013 the costs of healthcare in this country has skyrocketed. So have the stock prices of the insurance companies.\n\n\u201cThe average Obamacare premium has gone up by 221 percent since Obamacare passed. Remember when President Obama said Obamacare would actually bring down prices? He said premiums would decrease by $2,500 a piece. That was direct lie to the American people, and I believe Barack Obama knew it. He didn\u2019t seem to care. He was going to do anything he can to get a bill passed that was named after him.\n\n\u201cAt the same time, since Obamacare became law, the stock prices of U.S. insurance companies have gone way up. Some by 500 percent. Some by 1,000 percent. Because the money goes directly from the federal government into the insurance company\u2019s pockets. And what did Senate Democrats and Chuck Schumer who have held this country hostage for well over a month, well over five weeks \u2013 what does he want to do? He wants to just send them more money for one more year. Let\u2019s just send them all the checks again for one more year.\n\n\u201cRepublicans believe that the taxpayer dollars should go directly to people who are making their own decisions about healthcare for their families, not the insurance companies. Let the American people decide what works for them and their families.\n\n\u201cRemember, it was the Democrats who broke healthcare in this country. They broke it the very day that they passed Obamacare. And you know, recently, the liberal New York Times stated the obvious. This is the headline Sunday a week and a half ago: \u2018Obamacare is pricey.\u2019 Right there. Headline. Top of the page. \u2018Obamacare is pricey.\u2019 I\u2019m a doctor. I practiced medicine for 24 years in my home state of Wyoming, chief of staff of the Wyoming Medical Center in Casper, president of the state medical society. I will tell you exactly what Obamacare is. It\u2019s a failure. It\u2019s broken. It\u2019s unaffordable. The American people know that. Now, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats want to send another thirty or more billions of dollars to the insurance companies for the whole next year. This is a disgrace. It\u2019s not just a mistake. It\u2019s a disgrace.\n\n\u201cYou know, there are Democrats that realize that Obamacare is a failure \u2013 failed to lower the cost of care. Because just this week, on this very Floor, Senator Peter Welch of Vermont admitted, the Democrats \u2018did fail to bring down the cost of healthcare.\u2019 You better believe they failed. We\u2019ve been saying that for years. It\u2019s good to be here on the Floor of the Senate with another physician who knows all of the same things I know he\u2019s going to speak about this as well. Because my question is, why are Senator Welch\u2019s colleagues holding the entire country hostage to double down on a program they know is continuing to fail? It has failed, it continues to fail, and they want to send more money. Why are Senator Welch\u2019s Democrat colleagues holding the entire country hostage to double down on a law that has failed the nation with regard to our healthcare?\n\n\u201cFrom the start, Democrats started to realize it because they needed to paper over the terrible cost overruns they saw with Obamacare, and they did it with juicy, permanent subsidies. When Joe Biden became president, Democrats said, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s getting worse! We better put additional subsidies on top of the already juicy subsidies that were there, just to try to prop it up.\u2019 They did it to further hide the failures of Obamacare.\n\n\u201cWell, the end of the Biden COVID Bonus payments \u2013 as I like to refer to these new juicy subsidies, the add-on subsidies \u2013 only about 4 percent of next year\u2019s projected 20 percent premium spike comes from that. And what do we see? We see these new subsidies \u2013 they didn\u2019t lower premiums. They continued to try to hide the real cost of the premiums. They shift the cost. And who did they shift it to? They dump it on the taxpayers. That\u2019s what Chuck Schumer is trying to do today \u2013 to dump it onto the taxpayers, send more money directly to the insurance companies, and keep the American people out of the equation completely.\n\n\u201cToday, taxpayers are paying 93 percent of the cost of Obamacare premiums. This is a dramatic escalation from years before.\n\n\u201cAnd what did all of this extra spending by the Democrats buy? When there\u2019s that much money floating around, the American people are left behind \u2013 don\u2019t have a right to look right where it\u2019s happening. It brought waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption. Oh, yeah, there\u2019s been corruption.\n\n\u201cLast year, the American people filed over 200,000 complaints with the federal government because they were unknowingly signed up or switched into Obamacare plans. How did that happen? 200,000 people either didn\u2019t know it or were switched. How did that happen? Because it happened without their consent. You have to look into those situations. Those people had to find out about it and had to explain to the government. There are actually people that got switched and still haven\u2019t found out about it.\n\n\u201cInsurance agents and brokers get paid every time they enroll someone in Obamacare. They do. They get something for that. So, we know that some are actually criminally manipulating the system. And that\u2019s where we believe those 200,000 complaints have come from \u2013 people who have been maneuvered and manipulated without their knowledge. But Senator Schumer continues to promote keeping the government closed until his buddies from the big insurance companies, whose stocks have soared now under Obamacare, get another $30 billion or more injected right into their bank accounts. That\u2019s what Chuck Schumer came to the Floor yesterday and demanded \u2013 government staying closed until you guys all send $30 billion directly to the insurance companies.\n\n\u201cWe know what people across the country believe about insurance companies. Would the American people trust themselves to make these decisions or trust the insurance companies to protect them? That\u2019s what Chuck Schumer wants to do. He wants to keep the American people out of it. Meanwhile, federal workers have missed paychecks for more than a month. Military families are worried about rent. Air traffic controllers are overworked. They\u2019re exhausted. Plans are canceled. Flights are canceled. People are concerned about Thanksgiving. Enough is enough.\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s be clear with what Republicans are offering. We\u2019re ready to reopen the government today, to make sure everybody gets paid who\u2019s been working without pay for the last five or six weeks by passing a clean, continuing bipartisan resolution. That means funding the government at current levels, so we pay our military families, we pay federal workers, we fund food assistance to 42 million Americans. Think about this. That\u2019s 42 million Americans. That\u2019s more than twice as many people in this country that are on Obamacare. Yet Chuck Schumer and the Democrats are willing to deny food to hungry children who outnumber the people on Obamacare right now by two to one. That\u2019s what we\u2019re dealing with here. And not just once they\u2019ve denied it. 14 times the Democrats have voted to not pay the working people and continue to vote to keep the government closed.\n\n\u201cI know Republicans welcome a real debate about the many failures of Obamacare. We believe Americans deserve quality, affordable healthcare. And they haven\u2019t gotten that with Obamacare. Reforms are needed that actually lower costs, that protect the taxpayers. The American people deserve a full debate about the unaffordability of Obamacare. Senator Schumer\u2019s offer does nothing to address the cost of healthcare, does nothing to lower premiums, does nothing to reassure the American people. All it does is make insurance companies richer and taxpayers poorer. And that is why it\u2019s dead on arrival.\n\n\u201cRepublicans welcome the debate about having taxpayer money going directly to the American people versus this cozy relationship that Chuck Schumer wants to have with the insurance companies, moving money directly to them. It is time to reopen the government.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:52:45Z"]], "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-slams-schumer-plan-to-prop-up-obamacare/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.1560159511864185, "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"}