While he called to command a session of the marathon committee to examine the Medicaid cups and other critical elements of the National Policy Bill of the Republicans, the Brett Guthrie representative of Kentucky interviewed a crowded courtroom on Tuesday afternoon and asked for a respectful debate.
“I know that we have deep feelings about these questions, and we may not all agree on everything,” said Guthrie, a republican who is his first mandate as president of the Energy and Trade Chamber Committee.
It shouldn’t be.
A few minutes later, a group of demonstrators at the back of the hearing room of Capitol Hill began to shout among the legislators to “keep your gourmet hands of our Medicaid”.
They drowned the president’s calls to order, and the Capitol police finally withdrew five people – three in wheelchairs – while the dozens of panel legislators examined him. (Capitol police later said that the police arrested 26 people for illegally protesting in a congress building.)
The disruptions were a noisy kick -off for a meeting that took place all evening and which was to continue until Wednesday – a member of the committee estimated that he could take up to 28 hours – while the Republicans and Democrats clashed on the level, a key element of major legislation to promulgate the internal order of President Trump.
It took place while the Tax Writing House and Meaning Committee met to consider a tax proposal of 2.5 Billions of Dollars which would extend the Trump tax cuts in 2017; temporarily carry out your campaign promises not to tax advice or overtime; Roll up the subsidies for clean energy; And create a new type of tax investment account for children.
Democrats on the way and means committee tried without success to extend the tax credits that helped people buy insurance in the Obamacare markets. The subsidies should expire at the end of the year, and the Congressional Budget Office believes that more than four million people will lose the cover accordingly.
Representative Steven Horsford, Democrat of Nevada, proposed an amendment that would have made additional funding permanent. He argued that, because the Republicans used an unconventional form of accounting in their efforts to make other reductions in permanent tax, they should use the same approach to maintain affordable insurance premiums.
“You cannot say in a single breath, it is normal to provide tax reductions for billionaires and this can be free, and not to grant tax alleviation to workers’ families for health care, for God’s good,” he said.
A third panel, the Chamber’s Agriculture Committee, also met on Tuesday evening and began to consider a piece of the bill which would reduce nutritional aid to help collect funds for the plan.
But most of the drama on Tuesday was at the Energy and Trade Committee. In the first hour only, the Republicans making openings were interrupted several times by demonstrators who accused them of withdrawing health care from vulnerable people. GOP legislators, in turn, accused Democrats of having distorted the Medicaid cuts that they propose to score political points.
Guthrie worked to keep control of the procedure, at some point, presiding over a cries match as to whether the members of his panel were allowed to use the word “lie” in their remarks. (The Republicans had been authorized to say that the Democrats were lying on the scope of the Medicaid cups, but the Democrats were prohibited from saying that Mr. Trump was lying on his desire to protect the program. An informal agreement to simply avoid using the word “lie” completely for the rest of the session collapsed a few hours later.)
Even some Democratic senators came to take the show. The New Jersey Cory Booker Senators, Brian Shatz of Hawaii and Tina Smith of Minnesota were on site.
It was before the legislators debated a single provision of the measure. Eight hours after the start of the hearing, the committee had not yet debated Medicaid cuts, focusing on other changes in environmental and energy policy.
The discounts proposed by the bill for the coverage of Medicaid and its expansion under the Act respecting affordable care have become a flash point for Democrats and an area of concern for vulnerable Republicans who are wary of political consequences to support the reductions in insurance programs that have become popular with Americans.
Although the House Republicans have moved away from a huge structural overhaul of Medicaid, their proposal would reduce federal spending by around $ 912 billion and would make 8.6 million people not assured, according to a partial analysis of the Congress Budget Office which was disseminated by the Democrats of the Committee. About $ 700 billion in cuts would come from changes to Medicaid and the affordable care law.
The Republicans argued that their proposed discounts would help control the increase in Medicaid costs by targeting “waste, fraud and abuse” and ensure long -term health of the program.
“Medicaid was created to protect health care for Americans who, otherwise, could not support themselves, but the Democrats have widened the program far beyond this basic mission,” said Guthrie.
Their proposal requires stricter paper requirements throughout the program, makes changes that affect federal funding to states and add a work requirement to Medicaid which requires that poor and child -free adults prove that they work 80 hours per month to remain registered.
This provision, which targets an expansion of Medicaid under the Act respecting affordable care, would not begin until January 2029, after the next presidential election.
During their opening remarks, the Democrats of the Committee held posters matching with photographs of voters that they considered the “Faces of Medicaid”. Legislators have told their stories as a way to humanize people who are on the program.
Michigan Debbie Dingell representative was addressed directly to a family who had gone to Washington at the hearing, who, according to her, needed Medicaid to take care of a child with Down syndrome. Texas Marc Veasey representative held his phone to the microphone, inviting a constituent to talk about how Medicaid assigned it. Mr. Guthrie ruled that outside the order.
Some of the underlined people did not risk losing coverage as part of the republican proposal. And Democrats have frequently said that the Republican plan would lead to 13.7 million Americans do not become insured, inflating the effects of the bill on the coverage of approximately five million people.
Stressing these differences, republican legislators accused the democrats of dishonest politicians.
“Not a single person on these posters will be assigned,” said Florida Kat Cammack representative.
“It is regrettable that people are so rabid by disinformation,” said representative Gary Palmer, a republican of Alabama, referring to a woman who was withdrawn from the room by police after having shouted that she was HIV -positive and that the Medicaid cuts “will kill me”.
At the start of the hearing, the corridor outside was filled with demonstrators, many of them carrying shirts or panels bearing panels which read “Hands-Off Medicaid”. Others wore shirts by reading “Fight for Planned Parenthood”. The organization is targeted by a provision of the bill which would prevent Medicaid from funding health providers who also offer abortion services.
“I hope everyone understands that these demonstrations – people feel very strongly,” said representative Frank Pallone Jr., the best democrat of the committee. “Because they know they lose their health care.”
EDMONDSON CATIE Contributed reports.
