Watch Senator Rosen’s Full Remarks HERE.
CARSON CITY, NV – Today, U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) delivered remarks to the Nevada State Legislature detailing how she is working to deliver for hardworking Nevada families, including by fighting back against cost-raising tariffs and cuts to Medicaid to give tax breaks to the wealthy. Senator Rosen also reiterated her commitment to finding areas to work with Republicans to take meaningful action to lower costs and improve the lives of hardworking Nevadans.
Below are excerpts of Senator Rosen’s remarks:
Since the last time I spoke here, a lot has changed in Washington.
But there’s something that hasn’t changed, and will not change. And it’s my commitment to always put Nevada first.
I’ve built a record as one of the most bipartisan, independent, and effective U.S. Senators because I focus on getting things done for our state. Agree where you can and fight where you must.
No matter who’s in the White House or who’s in control of Congress, I will do everything I can to deliver for Nevada families who work hard every day. They count on me and they count on all of you.
And as I said, as some of you know, my motto has always been: Agree where you can, fight where you must.
[…]
Nevadans are practical and pragmatic and they want solutions…They want stability… They want us to work together to tackle rising costs, create better paying jobs, and protect the freedoms and opportunities that define our state.
And I can tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want the reckless actions this new Administration is taking: Funding Cuts. Mass Firings. Economic chaos.
These actions have put millions of dollars that our state depends on, that all of you are depending on as you do our budgets, putting it all at risk. Every single bit of it.
These actions have led to many Nevadans losing their jobs. They are jeopardizing the jobs of veterans who were hired by the federal government to help and serve our veterans, our local communities.
[…]
This is no way to run a country. It’s no way to treat the men and women who risked their lives to protect our freedoms.
We should be doing everything we can to honor their service, recognize their sacrifice, and make sure they can access every benefit that is owed to them, that they earned. We sit here free, able to do what we do because they put their lives on the line. And I want those calls to be answered at the Veterans Hotline, and I know you all do too.
Earlier this year, I helped introduce bipartisan bills to help veterans access their VA benefits more easily, and to increase veterans’ awareness of things like the VA Home Loan Program.
For those who were injured while fighting to protect all of us, the least we can do is ensure they all have full benefits.
Current red tape is preventing more than 50,000 combat-injured veteran retirees from receiving both their retirement pay through the Department of Defense and their disability payments through the VA.
That’s wrong. They earned it, they deserve it, and I helped introduce a bill with colleagues on both sides of the aisle, because veterans come from all over this great country, to fix and repeal the offsets that are currently in place. I’m proud of that bill and hope that we can pass it.
Now at a time when families are seeing their budgets tighten, I’m working across party lines to eliminate taxes on military retirement pay so our veterans can keep more of their money.
Military families aren’t the only ones being squeezed by higher prices. Because when costs go up, they hurt all Nevadans.
This is why Nevadans I’ve talked to are worried about the Trump tariffs.
These tariffs – they’re essentially a national sales tax – are going to raise the cost of everything you buy: your groceries, your gas, your medications, not to mention construction materials, which will make housing even MORE expensive. Interest rates go up, prices go up, everything goes up and up.
This is the complete opposite of what I believe we should be doing right now. We should be finding ways – every way we can – to lower costs.
It’s why I took action to help stop the Kroger-Albertsons mega-merger that would’ve raised those grocery prices for Nevada families.
It’s why I introduced bipartisan legislation to lower housing costs by helping to train and grow our housing construction workforce – because houses don’t build themselves – and I’ve introduced a bill to crack down on corporations who buy up housing and jack up prices for families.
It’s also why I’ve introduced bipartisan legislation to help lower the costs of child care and provide some relief for working families.
And just last week, I helped introduce legislation to provide those hardworking Nevada families with a much-needed tax cut, and expand the Child Tax Credit.
This is in addition to the bipartisan bill I helped introduce to eliminate taxes on tips, and allow working families to keep more of their paychecks.
I’m doing all of this because we should be providing relief for our Nevada families, for people who work hard and play by the rules, and we shouldn’t be giving more tax breaks to billionaires who frankly don’t need the money.
[…]
And that’s exactly why I’m fighting back.
I recently helped pass legislation overturning Trump’s tariffs on Canada, which is Nevada’s largest trading partner. That was bipartisan legislation we voted to pass, by the way.
I also helped introduce a bill to require the United States International Trade Commission to investigate how Trump’s recent tariffs will impact the American people, and make that information public.
And I am leading the charge in the Senate in making sure the Administration knows how destructive its tariffs are for small businesses.
[…]
I know many in this room know just how important, how critical Medicaid is. It makes up a sizable portion of our state budget, and we stand to lose more than half billion dollars if Medicaid is cut.
It’s more than just funding. It’s a lifeline for families. It’s a lifeline for moms and for children. I’ll talk about my special guest in a moment. This is more than a number. It’s more than a number they’re cutting. These are our families, our friends, our neighbors. And attempts to cut this important lifeline for children is going to put more than 300,000 children in Nevada at risk of losing their only source of health care coverage.
Nevada children like Levi, Levi is my guest, along with his really incredible mother Allyson Marchus.
They are here tonight because Medicaid has made a difference in their lives. And with their permission, I’m going to share just a little bit of Levi’s story because sometimes we look at budgets and there’s numbers you’re trying to balance and make all of this work, but there’s people behind every one of those numbers.
When Levi was just three years old, Allyson noticed a strange mole behind his ear.
So she thought she was just going to go to the doctor, like all of us who are parents here, you just go to the doctor, it’s just a little thing, you’ve got a bug bite. Simple doctor’s visit. But every parent’s worst fear was realized when a biopsy came back positive for melanoma — not just a person who’s been in the sun their whole life, that happens when you’re three years old, skin cancer – he had to have further tests, and his cancer spread.
Levi and Allyson have had to jump through hoop after hoop in order to implement a care plan — treatments, and medications, and surgery, and radiation – they had to repeatedly travel out of state to get special pediatric care, you have to go to hospitals where they know how to take care of young children.
[…]
No family should have to go through this, but Allyson never gave up. She and Levi have shown awe-inspiring strength and resilience every step of the way – they refused to quit fighting this awful disease.
And, the one thing that they didn’t have to worry about on this journey was how they were going to pay for that care, how are they going to get to the doctor, how are they going to go to these treatments, how are they going to be cared for, because they had Medicaid. So thanks to Medicaid she was able to be there for her son.
[Medicaid] made sure they had not one expense while dealing with some of the worst moments any parent can go through. Not one out-of-pocket expense. It took that burden, that one extra stress right off their back.
Today, Levi is five years old, and we are glad to say that he is in remission. It’s a pretty good thing. Of course he’s going to continue to be watched and cared for, but it’s a success story. It’s a success story because she had Medicaid.
This is why Medicaid matters. Not just for Levi and his family, but for all the Levis and all the families in Nevada and across the country, story after story after story, this is just one of them. I’m sure many of you in this room can tell stories like this as well.
Medicaid has made the difference in their lives. It covered medical care, it covered travel expenses, just like it did for Allyson and Levi.
It is literally a lifeline. All of these children, every one of them, have a name, have a family, and I want everyone in Nevada and in America to see these kids and see these families and know their names before they cut that budget.
So it’s shameful and immoral, I believe, that Republicans want to cut this program just to give tax breaks to the ultra-wealthy.
[..]
And while all of you in this legislature work to expand health care access in rural communities and tackle our doctor shortage, I want to tell you that in the Senate I’m doing the same thing. I have multiple bills to help bringmore nurses, doctors, and dentists to underserved areas. […] So I’ll tell you about a couple of bills I have, I know I’m going to partner with you on some of them, and they’re all bipartisan.
The first one is called the Physicians for Underserved Areas Act. It’s going to take the long overdue step of revising the graduate medical education process to increase the likelihood of states with physician shortages – like we are – to get more medical residency slots. We don’t have enough slots to take care of the people we have. So we’re going to fight to do that.
These bills are all bipartisan. Why? Because we’re not the only state who has a physician shortage. So we find our friends across the aisle, agree where you can and fight where you must. This is what we agree on. So I have a bipartisan bill called the REDI Act. It’s going to help increase the number of doctors and dentists – we never can forget the dentists because dental care is important too – in Nevada’s underserved areas by allowing them to defer their student loan payments without interest until they complete their residencies and internships. So they can go serve some of our rural communities, it’s hard for them to get dentists and doctors out there. We know this. This is a benefit. Everybody benefits.
My bipartisan SPARC Act, which I introduced just last week, will help increase the number of medical specialists in rural communities.
And finally, my Train More Nurses Act. We’ve been lucky in the past few years, we’ve been able to fund programs in our community colleges and universities to build out our nursing training. We’re about 4,000 nurses short, like I said. But we need nurse educators to train the new nurses. So the Train More Nurses Act does just that, makes new nurse educators. It passed the Senate unanimously last Congress, and we’re going to get it through again, and that’s going to help us address Nevada’s nursing shortage because we have all the space, but if we don’t have all the teachers, you all know it’s for nothing. So we’re hoping to get that through.
So much to do there. Health care, housing. We have to complement the efforts we work on together to improve access to tackle our housing crisis by creating new legislation to help small home builders, small local home builders, access financing to build new affordable housing.
[…]
Nevadans chose each and every one of you here for a reason, and they are counting on all of us together to support each other and support success in our state. It doesn’t always mean you agree on everything – find the things you agree on and do those. People are counting on us. They sent us here to find the places we agree – do that. Don’t let it stop you.
There is a lot to fight about in Washington, but there are a lot of places for agreement too, especially right here in Carson City.
I just really want to leave you all with a call to action and something that in my eight years now in the United States Congress I’ve really been using every day, and it has shown in my work that I’m proud of. The call to action is to find places to work together to deliver for the Nevada families, for our home, for the Nevada we care about.
I’m not asking anyone to compromise your values. What I’m asking you to do is value compromise. Find the places where you can agree and do that because babies are counting on you, seniors are counting on you, the vets are counting on you. Twelve things on the to-do list; you can find six. Do them. People will applaud you for that. You can argue about the other six, but trust me, they will send you back here and be proud, and they will tell you how proud that makes them to see you do that. You don’t have to compromise your values, just value compromise where you can agree. People are counting on all of us to lead. They’re looking to us in these tough times. […]
It’s not easy. It takes energy. It takes passion. It takes commitment. It takes care. Something I know every person in this room has or you wouldn’t have fought to be here. You could all be doing something else but you chose to come here and do this.
So in Nevada, we are not just Democrats or Republicans—we are Nevadans first. In this room especially, we are Nevadans first.
So I want us to think about moving forward together – with common purpose, shared values, and that unshakable commitment to build a stronger, more prosperous, and just a better Nevada for all of us. For the Levis, for our parents and grandparents, and all the kids in the future. I’m so grateful to have you all as partners and to be here today and speak to all of you. Thank you for your work.
###
