NEWARK, N.J. — As President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican-led Senate push to repeal and replace Obamacare, Democrats are reminding Americans how much they have to lose.
Sen. Cory Booker, alongside the New Jersey Democratic Delegation, rallied behind the Affordable Care Act on Sunday in one of the numerous protests across the country in the fight to keep the health insurance law.
Americans with pre-existing conditions are fully covered under the Affordable Care Act and 20 million more people now have health insurance but rising premiums and costly copayments have made some critical of the healthcare law.
“Healthcare is a right enshrined in our constitutional value. We are a nation where we pledge to liberty and justice for all, there is no justice if there is no health care,” Senator Booker said at the ‘Protect Our Care’ rally in Newark, New Jersey.
The rising star in the Democratic Party charged the crowd of advocates and union members that today ‘sparks the spark we must ignite’ to fight the repeal of ACA. Booker ended with the Frederick Douglass quote: “If there is no struggle there is no progress.”
Senator Booker has been very outspoken in Congress in the past week, testifying against the nomination of Jeff Sessions for U.S. Attorney General, defending Obamacare on "Face The Nation" and joining in Congressman John Lewis’s twitter war against the President-Elect.
Rep.Lewis appeared Sunday on "Meet The Press" and stated that Donald Trump’s election was illegitimate because of Russian interference.
Booker has also been catching heat for voting against the symbolic budget resolution amendment allowing Americans to purchase prescription drugs from Canada, which are cheaper. During the same late-night ‘vote-a-rama’ he voted for other amendments that would decrease the costs of drugs. His office released a statement citing drug safety concerns for his vote against medication importation.
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, the only woman in the New Jersey delegation, joined Booker in denouncing Republican actions to overturn Obamacare.
“I know what the dismantle of the Affordable Care Act will do for women. Nearly 600,000 people in the state of New Jersey were covered under the Affordable Care Act but more than five million will be negatively impacted by the dismantle of the Affordable Care Act.”
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Joining a growing number of democrats, the congresswoman announced that she would not be attending the Trump inauguration and instead would be hosting a vigil in Trenton, NJ to ‘pray for this country.’
“When people are elected to office, I expect them to uphold the constitution of the United States of America and when they don’t my question is at what point are they un-American? Taking health care away from people who need it and creating situations that could result in their untimely death is un-American,” Watson Coleman said.
Despite Republicans having control of the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrats have vowed to fight to keep President Obama’s signature health care law every step of the way.