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Democratic Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (FL-10) Wednesday shared his thoughts on the government shutdown during a mass call, hosted by Ash-Lee Henderson, executive director of the Highlander Research and Education Center, in New Market, Tenn.
Joined by more than 5,000 people, the video call, one of many held across the country under the umbrella Healthcare Not Authoritarianism Shutdown Showdown, was sponsored by MoveOn.org, Fair Share America, Indivisible, Public Citizen, Working Families Power, People’s Action and Women’s March.
VoxPopui listened in. Frost’s comments have been edited for clarity and brevity.
It is such an honor to be in this space with all of you this evening, unfortunately under some very dire circumstances. I just got off a plane just a few hours ago from Washington, D.C. I'm back in Orlando because over the next several days I'm gonna be rallying with people here locally, meeting with people locally, meeting with our nurses, meeting with our federal workers to talk about the fact that the reason the government has been shut down is because Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans would rather shut down the government than ensure that working people have healthcare.
That is exactly what's going on because of their failure and inability and unwillingness to go through and undo some of the nasty, horrible stuff they did in the Big Ugly Bill where they took away healthcare from 17 million people. They're unwilling and unable and not wanting to extend the ACA [Affordable Care Act] tax credits, which ensure that people can actually afford some healthcare in this country.
Without us doing work on this, millions of people — 25 million to be exact — will have their healthcare go up anywhere from 50 to 300 percent. And guess when those letters go out telling people that their healthcare is gonna go up? Today. Today, those letters are being sent out in the mail.
We know that we are already in a broken healthcare system in this nation. We know that we are fighting for a country where healthcare is an American right for every person here in our nation. But not only do they not wanna do anything to fix the problems we already had, they're making it worse. And Democrats have drawn a line in the sand to say, We're not gonna vote for a budget that's gonna enable what's been going on the last eight months.
And we are in this shutdown not because of us or any way we voted or didn’t vote. All you have to do is look at the people who are running the federal government. Republicans have the presidency, they have the House of Representatives and they have the Senate. The last time we had a government shutdown was in the Trump Administration Number One. So this guy loves to shut the government down as long as it's gonna benefit the billionaires and people just like him.
We just heard this announcement from the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] that … they are using the shutdown to cancel green energy projects in blue states across the country. What does that mean? When you cancel these projects, you are ensuring that what you pay for your utilities goes up. So in the middle of this shutdown meant to enrich billionaires, they are doing even more stuff to enrich billionaire polluters. …
This impacts everybody around the country. It doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or Republican. We're not doing this for Democrats. We're doing this for this country. We're doing it for the working people of this country that for generations have always gotten crumbs due to people like Donald Trump.
Trump is feeding a bunch of lies about why we're in this situation right now, and I know no one on this call will believe him. But he wants people and working people to believe that the reason they're losing their healthcare is because of an undocumented immigrant or an immigrant. He wants people to believe that the reason you're losing healthcare is because of other people who live in your community who might not look like you.
And something Donald Trump has to realize is people are waking up and people are not buying that. We're tired of looking around us for people to blame for the fact that we can't afford our housing, for the reason that we can't afford our healthcare, and that people are getting letters right now that say their healthcare is gonna go up upwards of 300 percent.
And now we know exactly where to look. We know to look up at people and billionaires like Donald Trump, who quite frankly has been taking advantage of and screwing over working people before he even got to the White House. …
But at the end of the day, this isn't some political blame game. This is about real people. This is about healthcare. This is about the decision on whether or not you're gonna be able to put food on the table or live in your home anymore because doubling your healthcare costs can change the lives for most of our people. Over 60 percent of this country lives paycheck to paycheck. We have massive wealth inequality in this nation. And not only is this president doing nothing to solve that, but he's making it worse. Why? For the same reason I said over and over again. He wants to keep the rich getting richer, and keep the poor getting poor and wants the middle class and the working class to become the working poor.
But we're gonna fight against it. … Because when you love somebody, you want 'em to be healthy. And that’s all I need to be in this fight. So God bless you all.
