Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) challenged their Republican counterparts Monday to “pursue a bipartisan path — you can work with us to protect health care for the American people and chart a better course for this country” when Congress returns after Labor Day facing a September 30 budget showdown.

But in the very same letter, Schumer and Jeffries repeated a thoroughly debunked hyper-partisan Democratic talking point that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 (OBBB) championed by President Donald Trump and congressional Republican leaders will abruptly leave 15 million Americans with no health care coverage.

“As leaders of the House and Senate, you have the responsibility to govern for all Americans and work on a bipartisan basis to avert a painful, unnecessary shutdown at the end of September. Yet, it is clear that the Trump Administration and many within your party are preparing to ‘go it alone’ and continue to legislate on a solely Republican basis,” the two Democratic leaders told Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) in an August 4 letter made public by the congressional minority chiefs.

“As a result of your choice to pursue a partisan agenda this Congress, 15 million Americans will now lose their healthcare. Put simply, it need not be this way. The Senate recently demonstrated that Congress is still able to achieve bipartisan appropriations legislation for the American people when the legislative process is permitted to work,” Schumer and Jeffries wrote.

“We request you swiftly convene a so-called Big Four meeting this week, for the four of us to discuss the government funding deadline and the health care crisis you have visited upon the American people. We anticipate your prompt reply,” they continued.

September 30 is the end of the 2025 fiscal year for the federal government. Without appropriations bills or a Continuing Resolution (CR) being signed into law by October 1, the government will have to shut its doors and send home all employees except those who are classified as “essential.”

Both parties in Congress routinely use the threat of forcing a government shutdown by refusing to go along with spending measures favored by the majority. The last time the government was closed due to the failure to enact required legislation by September 30 was in 2013. That shutdown continued for 16 days until leaders in both parties agreed to a compromise.

Neither Thune nor Johnson had responded to the Democratic leaders’ letter as of press time for this report.

The fact that Schumer and Jeffries based their plea for a hastily convened meeting on discredited claims that the OBBB will leave millions of Americans without health care coverage will almost certainly be taken by their GOP counterparts as evidence of bad faith.

On the same day the Schumer/Jeffries letter was released, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the Senate Finance Committee’s top Democrat, introduced legislation he said was needed “to reverse these devastating cuts” that “kick nearly 15 million people off their health insurance and totals more than one trillion dollars in health care cuts.”

Schumer was joined in co-sponsoring the Wyden proposal “to reverse all the health care cuts” in the OBBB by Democratic Senators Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico.

“Trump and Republicans in Congress have been actively misleading the American public. Americans were never told that this flawed bill will punch a hole in a lot more than Medicaid,” Wyden said in a statement announcing the bill’s introduction.

“There is simply no way to cut more than $1 trillion from the health care system without taking a deep toll on Americans of all stripes from coast to coast. The more Americans hear about this bill, the less they like it. It’s time to scrap Trumpcare and put America back on a path to affordable health care,” Wyden said.

But Schumer, Jeffries, and Wyden are saying nothing about a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis made public in June by House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas).

“New analysis from the nonpartisan, independent CBO exposes Democrats’ phony claims that vulnerable Americans are being ‘kicked off’ of Medicaid and confirms that the only people coming off of Medicaid under OBBBA reforms are those who are ineligible, illegal, or able-bodied adults refusing to work. Furthermore, CBO shows that the OBBBA saves states billions in Medicaid costs, which can be reinvested in their own Medicaid programs,” Arrington said in a June 25 statement.

“Finally, CBO rebukes the Democrats’ false claim that Republicans are cutting Medicaid. Under the OBBBA, the Medicaid program will continue to grow by over 30 percent over the next decade, even as Republicans root out waste, fraud, and abuse,” Arrington said.

“My Democrat colleagues have resorted to false claims and fear mongering in order to protect benefits for illegals and healthy people who refuse to work at the expense of taxpayers and vulnerable Americans who depend on these programs,” he continued.

Mainstream media coverage of the OBBB and Medicaid issue has been almost entirely uncritical of Democrat claims despite the CBO analysis. In an August 1 news story for The New York Times, reporter Sarah Kliff framed the issue as follows:

“About half of the 10 million will lose coverage because of a new requirement that people who enroll in Medicaid prove that they are working, looking for work or unable to work. The new policy will cut Medicaid spending by $325 billion over the next decade, funds that will be used to finance President Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy.”

In fact, the Medicaid spending reductions have no relationship at all to the OBBB’s making permanent the across-the-board tax cuts approved by Congress and signed into law by Trump in 2017. Tax rates only fix percentages of income that are subject to federal taxation. Federal revenues generally increase following tax cuts due to increased economic activity.

An analysis of Medicaid spending data conducted by Issues & Insights notes that the rate of increase in the health care program’s expenditures decreases, not the overall total for the current fiscal year.

“Spending was increasing at a fairly steady rate until 2021, when [then-President] Joe Biden massively expanded the program. Not only did spending jump upward, but Biden set Medicaid on a permanently higher spending track. Under the OBBB, spending continues to climb, just more slowly,” according to I&I.