Warnock Lambasts Dr. Oz Over His Comments About Self-Sufficiency: ‘Who Should Be Self-Sufficient?’

8 hours ago

During Friday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) questioned Trump’s CMS Nominee Dr. Oz about self-sufficiency.

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Transcript

00:00Senator Warnock. Thank you Brother Chairman. A week like this in Washington

00:06reminds me of why I return every week to my pulpit. Spending time with people in

00:15my church and all across my community. They are the folks who keep me grounded.

00:20These are the folk who are seeing their paychecks by less and less while the

00:25rich get richer and the poor get poorer. These are ordinary people I'm thinking

00:29about when I consider whether Congress should spend trillions of dollars on a

00:34huge tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits millionaires and billionaires

00:39while the entire half of working families pick up the tab through cuts to

00:45their health care. In addition to that, blow a four and a half trillion dollar

00:50hole in the debt. I am disappointed that Dr. Faulkner does not seem to understand

00:58or care about the concerns and the experiences of hard-working Georgia

01:03families, the people I know. When we talked about Washington Republicans

01:08plans to cut Medicaid and I asked the nominee his thoughts, he suggested that

01:15people just need to quote be self-sufficient and just get better jobs

01:19with better benefits. Now I was raised by a dad who poured into me a serious work

01:24ethic so I believe in self-sufficiency. But almost all of the adults on Medicaid

01:31are either working or in school or they're caregivers. By and large if they

01:36can work they do work. These folks have jobs and responsibilities, they are

01:40construction workers, they are restaurant servers, they are home caregivers and

01:43farmhands. They're doing exactly what this nominee wants them to do but he and

01:48Washington Republicans want to kick them off of Medicaid anyway. Who else does

01:53this nominee think should be self-sufficient? I wonder if he thinks

01:56Elon Musk should be self-sufficient. He's received 38 billion dollars in government

02:04contracts, government loans, government subsidies and tax credits. Who does he

02:10think should be self-sufficient? Should children be self-sufficient, seniors in

02:15nursing homes, veterans, one in ten veterans are enrolled in Medicaid, people

02:19with mental illness or substance abuse. Who is he talking about? And so let's be

02:26very clear if folks want to have a serious bipartisan conversation about

02:31reducing our debt I am all in on that conversation. I'm deeply worried about

02:37the debt that we're going to leave our children and our grandchildren as the

02:40father of two young children myself. You want to have a conversation about that

02:44I'm ready. You want to have a conversation about lowering health care costs I am

02:49ready to do it in a bipartisan way but I am unwilling to give a massive handout

02:53to the wealthiest people in our country while blowing a huge hole in the debt

02:58and because of that and other reasons this nominee does not share that

03:02commitment I will vote no on his nomination and I urge my colleagues to

03:07do the same.

Warnock Lambasts Dr. Oz Over His Comments About Self-Sufficiency: ‘Who Should Be Self-Sufficient?’

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