Senator Brian Schatz

But it's also a broader issue, which is, you know, we represent, let's say, at least in the last election, half the country.

slightly less than half the country.

Obviously, we lost the presidential and all the rest of it.

But even if you suppose that we represent 48% of Americans, we are out of power, but we should not be considered powerless.

And to the extent that the Senate is supposed to work a certain way,

we're not without leverage here.

And we're not using our leverage for some sort of weird issue that we cooked up in a lab.

We're not using our leverage to just make trouble.

We're using our leverage to try to make sure that we prevent a real thing from happening to people.

And I have to tell you, everywhere I go,

I've unfortunately been in Washington and not in Hawaii for now several weeks.

But everywhere I go, people come up to me and say, hey, my sister wanted me to tell you thank you.

My cousin, they just got their letter and their rates are going up 112 percent.

So keep fighting.

And I think that's why we've got the moral clarity and the political unity that we need to win this fight.

I mean, they have to decide that the pressure is too much to bear.

And I think that what they truly didn't understand was the extent of these rate increases.

We were saying that rates were going to double or worse.

But you'll be forgiven if you kind of assume that something that comes from the opposing party is sort of designed to be persuasive and not entirely accurate.

And I think what is the reason Marjorie Taylor Greene and a California Congressman and a Long Island Congressman are starting to say stuff and a couple of my Republican Senate colleagues are starting to say stuff is like, there's kind of no spinning the letter that you get from your provider saying, here's the new price.