Watch Kennedy’s comments here. 

WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) delivered the following remarks on the U.S. Senate floor:

“Let me start with the reconciliation bill, which President Trump and others called the One Big Beautiful Bill.

“I continue to go through the bill, and every time I do, I’m impressed. This is a breathtaking bill in the sense that it covers so many subjects. I think each of us could spend hours talking about this bill. I'll just hit the highlights. This is one of the most far-reaching pieces of legislation that this body will ever pass.

“We extended the 2017 tax cuts—no small feat in itself. Had we not done that, the American people would have suffered under a $4.3 trillion tax increase. So, we stopped that tax increase. And some of my friends and colleagues talk about, ‘Well, all you did was stop a tax increase on the billionaires.’ That is nonsense. That is nonsense on a stick.

“Unless your soup of the day is gin, you know that is a lie.

“Half of that tax increase would have hit working men and working women and working families in this country. The other half would have hit our small businesses. And, yes, some of our large businesses. We stopped that. We made some of those tax cuts permanent.

“We cut taxes on tips. In this bill, we cut taxes on overtime. We cut taxes on Social Security. We cut taxes on car loans. We expanded a tax credit for childcare to help moms and dads pay for the childcare so they can work. We increased the child tax credit. We increased the standard deduction—and that's going to take effect immediately. 

“We funded school choice. For years and years and years, I have tried—we all have tried, many of us have tried—to provide the American people, moms and dads, with school choice. This bill did it.

“I went to a public school. I'm proud of that, but competition makes all of us better. I can go to my overpriced Capitol Hill apartment or Capitol Hill grocery store and choose from six or seven types of mayonnaise. Why shouldn't we give parents, moms and dads, choices for their education? We're doing that with the school choice portion of this bill. 

“We increase money for the border, and we increased money for defense.

“Now, we also addressed the problem in Medicaid. And I’ve been very disappointed because some commentators have said that we're going to throw off from the Medicaid rolls, I read, anywhere from 10 to 12 million people. And the implication in some of these articles and some of these comments is that we're just going to look at the Medicaid rolls and go through and say, ‘You're gone. We can't afford you.’ And that's not what this bill does. 

“The first thing you have to realize is that actually Medicaid is not going to be cut at all under this bill. Under our bill that we just passed, our spending on Medicaid over the next 10 years is going to go up 20%. So, nobody is cutting Medicaid.

“There are some people, as a result of the new provisions that we have put into law, who will no longer be eligible for Medicaid and will no longer get Medicaid, but they weren't entitled to get it in the first place. So, when you say, ‘Well, you're throwing people off from Medicaid.’ They weren't entitled to it in the first place. 

“You're not entitled to Medicaid if you're making $200,000 a year, and you didn't tell the truth when you signed up for the Medicaid in your state, and your state didn't verify your statements.

“But let me give you one example. CMS just put out a report. . . . 2.8 million of those Americans who will lose Medicaid are double dippers. They signed up twice. We have 1.2 million people on the Medicaid rolls who are signed up in two states. And the American taxpayer is paying twice. . . . Most states use Managed Care, and they pay per Medicaid patient. So, if a state is paying—let's say, I’ll pick a number—$18,000 per Medicaid patient per year to the health care organization to provide their care, and that person is signed up in two states, they're double dipping, and it's costing the American taxpayer two $8,000 payments a year. That's cheating.

“So, from one perspective, ‘You're throwing these people off Medicaid.’ They weren't entitled to double-dip in the first place. CMS also came out with a report—by CMS, I mean the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is the federal agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid.

“CMS has also found that there are 1.6 million people who are on Medicaid today who are receiving both Medicaid and Obamacare.

“Well, what's Obamacare? I'll refresh everyone's memory. Medicaid is supposed to be for the poor and disabled. And Medicare is for the elderly. And a lot of other Americans have health insurance through their job. But there are certain numbers of Americans who don't have health insurance because they're not old enough for Medicare, and they're not poor enough for Medicaid, and maybe their employer doesn't offer health insurance. So, they can go to an exchange—we call them the Obamacare exchange—and buy health insurance. 

“Now, President Obama and some of my colleagues—I wasn't here then—but when we passed Obamacare, the Obamacare exchanges, the Affordable Care Act, we were told health insurance would be cheaper. And we were told it would be more accessible. It's been neither. We were also told, ‘If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.’ That wasn't true either. But the point is that we have a number of Americans who—if they don't qualify for Medicare, they don't qualify for Medicaid, they don't get insurance through their employer—they go to the Obamacare exchanges. 

“But CMS found we've got 1.6 million people who are getting both health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges, which we subsidized, taxpayers do, and through Medicaid. That's called double dipping. It's illegal. And CBO [Congressional Budget Office] can put out all the reports that they want to, saying, ‘Oh, you're throwing all of these people off Medicaid.’ Technically, they're right, but they're not eligible to be on Medicaid.

“I just gave you an example: 2.8 million people who are double-dipping. It's illegal to double-dip. It's immoral to double-dip. It's unfair to taxpayers to double-dip. All our bill does is say, ‘You can't double-dip.’ Cheating is wrong.

“Is that throwing people off Medicaid? Technically, yes, but once again, as the other provisions in this bill also do, we're taking people off Medicaid who weren't eligible for it in the first place. As a result of these 2.8 million people, I think CMS—I’m looking for their figure—I think it costs the American taxpayers, because of these 2.8 million folks who are double dipping, $14 billion a year over a ten-year window, which is the horizon we used. That's $140 billion that we're going to save, and that savings is going to go back into Medicaid to make it even stronger.

“That's just one example of how much of the reporting on our bill is misleading.”

 Watch Kennedy’s speech here.