A message from Senator Michael Bennet

I’m Fighting Against Trump’s Reckless Budget Bill - WATCH

Video of My Full Speech Available HERE

In the middle of the night, I delivered a speech on the Senate floor condemning Republicans' dangerous Budget Bill, which will increase the national debt by more than $3.3 trillion over the next ten years – all to give another tax cut to the wealthiest Americans and large corporations. 

While Republicans are rushing to pass their Budget Bill to appease President Trump, I am sounding the alarm on what this legislation would mean for Colorado. As of this April, Medicaid covered more than 1.2 million Coloradans. Passing this bill could result in an estimated 240,000 Coloradans losing coverage, nearly 20% of the people who currently rely on this safety net.

That's not all. Clean energy resources, such as wind and solar, benefit our communities and help keep energy bills down, but Republicans want to roll back the progress we've made on renewable energy. New provisions in the Budget Bill would place a punitive tax on wind and solar energy. Now, not only would the bill slash clean energy investments, it would impose an expensive new penalty on future clean energy projects. Colorado is leading the way on clean energy – but this reckless new provision would harm these industries and raise energy costs.

As if it couldn't get worse, the bill would also result in the most significant cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in history. This program helps one in ten Coloradans put nutritious food on the table. I've heard from Coloradans directly: SNAP works and is one of the most effective tools we have to reduce hunger. Instead of protecting these essential benefits families rely on, Republicans are looking to reduce access to food assistance, shift the cost burden to states, and pile on more red tape. At a time when food insecurity is rising, slashing this lifeline is cruel. 

The Republican's so-called Big Beautiful Bill will harm Colorado's most vulnerable communities by taking away lifelines like Medicaid and SNAP to finance tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. 

It's a disgrace. I can only hope that the next generation will build a better country than the one we've given them.

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“Many young people today can't afford to live on their own, and they may never be able to afford a house. They can't afford health care or child care. They can't count on a quality education for their children in too many parts of America, some are really worried about whether they're going to be able to afford a child at all. If you haven't heard a family say that to you in your town halls or in your meetings, you haven't been paying attention.

“But instead of addressing any of these challenges, we are debating a bill tonight that will make the wealthiest Americans even wealthier and the poorest Americans, even poorer, half a million of whom live in Colorado, while adding millions more to the debt, which working Americans are going to have to pay back. That's what this Republican trickle-down economics comes down to, no matter how you dress it up. That's what it comes down to. 

“Our generation has made some very bad choices when it comes to our children's future. This bill only makes matters worse for them, and all this debt will constrain the choices that they are going to be able to make for themselves, and that's a shame, Madam President, because unlike us, perhaps they will aspire to following in the footsteps of the greatest generation to build a country where lifespans are growing, not falling, where economic mobility is rising, where poverty and economic anxiety are falling, where energy exports are increasing and emissions are decreasing, where quality health care and child care, education and affordable housing are abundant, not scarce.

“It seems obvious to me, Madam President, that our child's ambition should be ours as well. Unfortunately, tomorrow, the Republican majority may pass a bill that takes us further in the wrong direction. In its wake and in its wreckage, Americans who do feel an obligation to the next generation are going to have to fight even harder to fulfill our duty.”
 

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