Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023
Floor Speech
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Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, a government should help its people; it should make life easier and improve well-being. 1 reject the Republican Default on America Act that seeks to exact $4.8 trillion in harm from children, the elderly, veterans, workers, small businesses, families, and our economy. This bill is one of the most cruel that has come before the House in the 25 years that I've served here. This Republican Default on America would help tax cheats and oil companies while devastating our Nation to appease Republican extremists.
In Illinois, the House Republicans extreme demands would: put 562,000 people at risk of losing Medicaid; threaten food insecurity for 54,000 people aged 50-55; eliminate preschool and child care for almost 11,000 children; make college more expensive for at least 229,500 students; deny student loan debt relief to 679,000 borrowers; harm 960,000 k-12 students with draconian education cuts; cut $10 million in mental health funding for students; and increase housing costs for over 28,000 people. In my Congressional District alone, it would kill about 7,500 jobs, put health benefits at risk for 264,000 people, jeopardize Social Security payments for 73,000 families, and threaten the retirement savings of almost 78,000 people near retirement.
The harm from the Republican Default on America would affect the entire Nation.
It would deny over 40 million borrowers much-needed student loan debt relief, take away the opportunity to go to college for 80,000 youth, and make college more expensive for 6.6 million Pell grant recipients.
It would cut over 2 million rural and underserved families from health care services.
It would increase hunger for over one million seniors and strip nutrition assistance from millions of people, including 1.2 million women, infants and children.
It would pull 200,000 children from Head Start and 100,000 children from childcare, making it harder for parents to work and hurting our economy.
It would evict over 430,000 families from Section 8 housing and yank rental assistance from an additional 640,000 families, an unprecedented loss of affordable housing for older adults, persons with disabilities, families with children, and veterans.
It would make it more costly to run small businesses and result in 125,000 fewer entrepreneurs having free business counseling and leave 295,000 out from the Entrepreneurial Development program.
It would cut 780,000 jobs in our economy according to Moody's Analytics while likely resulting in 100,000 fewer workers in registered apprenticeships and shipping domestic manufacturing jobs overseas.
It would threaten veterans' health and benefits by removing 87,000 jobs across the Veterans Health and Benefit Administration.
It would endanger our safety by cutting $8 billion from the Department of Justice programs that support federal, state; and local law enforcement and first responders.
It would increase energy costs for working families and harm our climate, including by cutting the provision that I helped enact to bring the economic and environmental benefits of solar energy to low- income communities.
It would devastate research in our country that helps us compete globally and improve our health and well-being via 5,000 fewer NIH grants and $4 billion in cuts from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy's Office of Science.
The Default on America Act is anti-children, anti-seniors, anti- veterans, anti-small-business, antihealth-care, anti-labor, and anti- education. Quite frankly, it is anti-American. I vehemently oppose this cruel bill that threatens the strength of our Nation and the well-being of our citizens. I urge my colleagues to reject it.
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