Terri Sewell is angry.
During an interview with the Alabama Politics This Week podcast, the eight-term U.S. representative from Alabama’s 7th Congressional District was uncharacteristically animated and pointed in her comments after eight Senate Democrats voted with Republicans to end a 42-day government shutdown without concessions from Republicans.
Sewell called the deal “empty promises,” said her Senate colleagues “caved” and called Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer a poor leader.
“I am furious at the eight members of the Senate that chose to literally give in,” Sewell said. “I thought that we were showing such a force of unity as a party, and at a time when this country needed us to do that. I know Chuck Schumer voted no this time. His vote wasn’t one of the votes to do it. The caucuses really are led by a leader and that leader has to lead. I can tell you that, you know, cooler heads would have prevailed if Nancy Pelosi had been over there as a leader of the Senate.”
Much of Sewell’s anger, she said, came from the fact that she has been holding town halls and meeting with her constituents and hearing firsthand of the increases in their health insurance premiums. She told a story of a gentleman coming up to her in the grocery store in Wilcox County recently and showing her his letter from his insurance company.
“The same plan that used to be $188 a month went up to $1,500 a month,” Sewell said. “People can’t afford that. They’re scared, and rightfully so.”
Sewell said she believed that prior to Tuesday, when the seven Democrats and one independent folded, that Democrats were on the same page about what was at stake, that they weren’t going to give in without protections from health care cuts contained in the Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill” spending package that was shoved through earlier this year. Those cuts to subsidies within the Affordable Care Act will drastically increase the costs of health insurance plans purchased by some of the nation’s poorest citizens and are projected to boot roughly 4 million Americans off their plans.
The cost increases won’t stop there, however. The domino effect of those increases, coupled with millions of the nation’s most vulnerable citizens being without health coverage, will also send costs skyrocketing across the spectrum.
Sewell said she and her Democratic colleagues are now left in the unenviable position of relying on Republicans to rebel against Donald Trump and do what’s right for their constituents—something they were unwilling to do when the spending bill was passed this summer.
“I know that my Republican colleagues have folks in their district who have similar huge increases in their premiums and can’t afford it,” Sewell said. “I mean, in Alabama alone, we have over 400,000 Alabamians that depend upon the Affordable Care Act, and 53,000 of them are in my district. So I know that the rest have to be in other people’s districts.
“So you will see us, me and my Democratic colleagues in the House, continue this drumbeat because it is of dire consequences to so many Americans. I really want folks at home to call our senators and tell them about what’s going on. We have to make sure that we put the pressure where the pressure belongs, which is on this president and the Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate.”
To listen to the full interview with Sewell, go to the Alabama Politics This Week website, subscribe and download the podcast on all major platforms or you can watch it on YouTube.
