Raphael Warnock: Big Beautiful Bill Will ‘Throw Poor People Away’

Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that if the so-called “big, beautiful” spending bill became law, it would “throw poor people away.”

Host Kristen Welker said, “One of the big issues in what is now called the big, beautiful bill act is Medicaid, and he makes the argument people should have to work in er to get Medicaid benefits. What’s wrong with that argument? Why shouldn’t people have to go to work in ER to get Medicaid?”

Warnock said, “This is what the legislation does; they’ll throw poor people away. I believe in work. I recently released a study in Georgia that shows that this work reporting requirement, because that’s what we’re talking about, is not work requirements; work reporting requirements are very good at people kicking people off of health care. It is not good at incentivizing work at all.”

He added, “There’s something wrong-headed about this view of poor people and working-class people that somehow they don’t want to go to work. We have seen this failed experiment in Georgia. We have over a half million people in Georgia who are in the health care coverage gap. They are largely the working poor. The governor has put a program in place, which he calls Pathways to Coverage. He ought to call it blockage to coverage because they have only enrolled about 7000 people. That is pathetic. The data clearly shows that if you want to get people to work just provide them basic health care so that they don’t get sick. What they’re trying to do now is take this terrible experiment in Georgia, force it on the whole nation. What we will see as a result of that is a workforce that is sicker and poorer and an economy that’s weaker.”

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