King V. Burwell Decision

Floor Speech

Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I was so glad to see Senator Stabenow down
on the floor a week ago talking about a pretty simple issue, which is
the tax increase that is going to occur to 6.4 million Americans if the
Supreme Court rules this week, next week, for the plaintiffs in the
case of King v. Burwell. We wanted to come down to the floor and
accentuate this message so people all around this country know what is
at stake.

What is at stake is 6.5 million people losing their health insurance.
That maybe gets the headlines. But the way in which people get
affordable health insurance under the Affordable Care Act is by tax
credits. So the immediate effect of a reversal of subsidies for Federal
exchange States is that 6.5 million Americans are going to have their
taxes dramatically increased by thousands of dollars if this body
refuses to act in the face of a Supreme Court finding for the
plaintiffs.

So we wanted to come down to the floor just to talk a little bit
about what the stakes are for people's tax bills and how this is going
to be a gut punch for millions of American families if the Supreme
Court rules the way we hope they don't.

I think it is, first of all, important to say at the outset that most
of us who have followed the Affordable Care Act and its legal
interpretation think this is a sham of a case. This is a political
attack on the Affordable Care Act masked as a legal case.

There is absolutely no question that the Affordable Care Act is built
in a way to deliver subsidies to both State exchanges and Federal
exchanges. I will not go into all the details as to why that is the
clear case. But though we are talking about what might happen if King
v. Burwell comes down for the plaintiffs, many of us think that would
be an absolutely ludicrous legal result, one that would be a stunning
act of judicial overreach, essentially a political substitution of the
Court for the legislature. But I want to talk about a couple case
studies and then turn the floor over to my colleagues.

I have come down and talked about people from Connecticut. I talked
about Christina, a small business owner from Stratford; Susie, a two-
time breast cancer survivor from North Canaan, CT; and Sean and Emilie,
two freelancers from Weston. All of these people have gotten tax
credits through the Affordable Care Act, and it has allowed them to
have a lower tax bill but also get insurance. Many of them, it was the
first time in their lives or in recent history that they have been able
to afford insurance. But there are stories all over the country that
are parallel to the stories from Connecticut I have been telling on the
floor of the Senate over the course of the last year.

For instance, there are 832,000 Texans who are receiving an average
tax credit of $247 a month. If the Supreme Court strips away these tax
credits, those 800,000 people in Texas are going to see a tax increase
of around $3,000. People like Aurora, a 26-year-old from Houston, got
health insurance coverage through Texas's Federal marketplace. She
works at a small nonprofit where she helps her LGBT peers get the
coverage they need. She is saving $1,500 a year getting insurance she
would have never been able to afford. She says, quite simply:

I wouldn't be able to afford my policy otherwise. It has
really helped me be able to get my well person exam and other
preventions screenings that I'd not had in years.

She is one of 832,000 people in Texas who are going to have their
taxes increased, their insurance stolen away.

I am a big New York Giants fan, so I get to watch a lot of games in
which the Giants are playing in this stadium, which is, as Cowboy fans
know it, AT Stadium. You could fill AT Stadium 10 different times.
This is a huge stadium. People see the giant jumbotron on the roof of
this stadium.

You could fill AT Stadium 10 times with the number of people in Texas
alone who could lose their health care and lose their tax cut--$3,000,
on average, per person a year in Texas--if King v. Burwell is decided
in favor of the plaintiffs.

But I will tell another story of a young woman named Celia. She is a
self-employed Pilates instructor in Florida. Since 2005, she hasn't
been able to find health care coverage. Since 2005, she has been
uninsured. Now, she has been lucky because she didn't get really sick
during that time, but she only had a $900-a-month plan that she could
find. That was the cheapest. With the Affordable Care Act, Celia
finally has insurance. Celia is able to finally sign up for a health
insurance plan that has meant something to her because last year she
had a minor accident in her home. She had to go to the emergency room.
With her insurance, she received a bill of $57. She said, ``I couldn't
have even imagined what that would have cost me out-of-pocket--more
than I could ever afford.'' This year, Celia has reenrolled in another
silver plan, and for around $200 a month she knows that she is going to
be covered if she gets sick or if she has another minor accident.

In Florida--we think this is a lot of people, 832,000. In Florida,
there are 1.3 million people who are receiving health care tax credits
right now. Now, I root for the University of Connecticut Huskies, and
so we don't necessarily get to play in stadiums this big when you are
playing out of the American Athletic Conference. But everybody in
Florida knows The Swamp, and you could fill The Swamp 15 times over
with the 1.3 million people who could lose their health care tax
credit. Those are more people than attend Gator football games on an
annual basis. Those are more people than attend Gator football games
over a 2-year period of time. So 1.3 million people are going to lose
their coverage in Florida alone.

So let's call a spade a spade. This is about health care. It is about
our belief that for people who are working hard and playing by the
rules, they should have a shot at being healthy, but it is also about
keeping people's tax bills low. If we ever contemplated a bill on the
floor of the U.S. Senate that raised 1.3 million people's taxes in
Florida by an average of $3,500, my friends from the Republican side of
the aisle--our friends would be screaming bloody murder that this was
an unjustifiable, unconscionable, unworkable tax increase on the
American people. But there is largely silence or temporary fixes and
patches that are proposed.

So I am glad to join my colleagues to talk about what this means.

Now, I am from Connecticut and we have a State exchange. We have a
State exchange. Conventional wisdom is that those of us who have State
exchanges are going to be protected because we will continue to get
subsidies. But this is going to be a death spiral nationally. We have
no idea how this will actually play out. When you have all of these
subsidies ripped away with the insurance reforms still baked in, even
in States such as Connecticut, where you have a State exchange, we are
not immune. Nobody is immune. The primary victims here are going to be
the people in States such as Florida and Texas, as I mentioned. But
this is going to be a national catastrophe.

We hope we don't ever have to have a conversation on the floor of the
Senate as to how to fix this. But we better be clear ahead of time as
to what the implications are.

I yield the floor.

I know my colleague will seek recognition.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

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