{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=E072B929-CA82-4A7D-ADE3-B98882DBBDD9", "Thune: Republicans Offer Better, More Affordable Health Care Solutions for Americans", "2025-12-09", "2025", "2025-12", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "Clickhereto watch the video.\n\nWASHINGTON \u2014 U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) today spoke at a press conference with Senate Republican leadership:\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as delivered):\n\n\u201cAs you all know, we\u2019re going to have a vote this week, on Thursday, on a Democrat proposal to deal with the Biden COVID bonuses.\n\n\u201cAnd this is a vote, as you all know, we could have had weeks ago.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s been on offer now before we had to go through a 43-day government shutdown.\n\n\u201cBut that\u2019s what the Democrats opted to do, and so at the end of the 43 days now, we are going to have a vote on their proposal \u2013 which, as it turns out, is really a proposal that just extends the status quo, doesn\u2019t do anything to reform these Biden COVID bonuses in a way that would get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse.\n\n\u201cAnd I think the one thing that\u2019s clear about this, and I think you all who follow this subject know this, that the way that the program is structured, the money goes straight to the insurance companies.\n\n\u201cAnd the way that we think this ought to work is \u2026 you ought to come up with a way in which you can deliver the benefit to the patients and not to the insurance companies, and that you shouldn\u2019t have hardworking Americans subsidizing affluent people, people who make a lot of money, and that\u2019s what their proposal continues to do.\n\n\u201cThere is no income limit.\n\n\u201cThere are zero-dollar premiums.\n\n\u201cThere are millions of Americans who don\u2019t even know they have coverage.\n\n\u201cAnd they have decided not to do anything \u2013 zero, zero reforms to this program \u2013 and so the bill that they\u2019re going to put on the floor will fail.\n\n\u201cBut that doesn\u2019t mean that there isn\u2019t a path forward here.\n\n\u201cWe also will have a vote.\n\n\u201cOur members have decided that we\u2019re going to vote on a Crapo-Cassidy proposal, which does the things that I mentioned.\n\n\u201cIt actually does make health insurance premiums more affordable.\n\n\u201cIt drives down, according to the Congressional Budget Office, premiums by double-digit levels.\n\n\u201cIt delivers the benefit directly to the patient, not to the insurance company.\n\n\u201cAnd it does it in a way that actually saves money \u2026 to the taxpayer.\n\n\u201cThat is a win-win proposal.\n\n\u201cSo that is an alternative that we will put forward and that we will have a vote on \u2026 Thursday, and we\u2019ll see where the Democrats come down on that.\n\n\u201cBut the fact of the matter is that as long as we have been talking about this subject \u2013 and again, they drug us through a 43-day government shutdown in order to do this \u2013 just in the last week, the Government Accountability Office came out with a finding and an audit that they did.\u201d\n\n[\u2026]\n\n\u201cWhen I say waste, fraud, and abuse, I am not kidding.\n\n\u201cThat is the finding as recently as this last week by the Government Accountability Office.\n\n\u201cThis program desperately needs to be reformed.\n\n\u201cThe Democrats have decided [they\u2019re] not going to do anything to reform it, and so we\u2019ll see where the votes are on Thursday.\u201d", 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.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=E072B929-CA82-4A7D-ADE3-B98882DBBDD9"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7957939524203539, "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"}