[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 73 (Thursday, May 4, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6163-S6164]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            MORNING BUSINESS

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be a 
period for morning business until 5:30 p.m., with Senators allowed to 
speak for not to exceed 5 minutes each.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, last month, the Medicare Board of Trustees 
issued its annual report. Four members of this committee are appointees 
of President Clinton--three of them currently serve in his Cabinet.
  The trustees concluded that Medicare will begin to go broke next 
year, and will be completely bankrupt by the year 2002.
  If this were to occur, no payments, by law, can be made by Medicare 
to pay for hospital care or for any other services paid for by the 
trust fund.
  Thirty-three million seniors and four million disabled individuals 
depend on the Medicare Program every year.
  It is for them, and for those who will follow, that we must commit to 
preserving, improving, and protecting the Medicare Program.
  Tuesday, the Speaker of the House and I extended a verbal invitation 
to President Clinton to sit down with us and to begin working on a 
bipartisan plan to preserve, improve, and protect Medicare.
  Judging from the President's actions in the past weeks, and from 
remarks he delivered earlier yesterday at the White House Conference on 
Aging, it appears that the President has once again chosen partisanship 
over leadership.
  Instead of heeding the advice from his trustees, the President heeded 
the advice of his political pollsters, using yesterday's speech as an 
opportunity to engage in scare tactics and to mislead America's 
seniors.
  Nevertheless, Speaker Gingrich and I are willing to give the 
President the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he did not watch the news 
Tuesday evening or read the paper yesterday morning. Perhaps no one at 
the White House told him of our invitation.
  [[Page S6164]] So, yesterday afternoon, a letter from the Speaker and 
myself was delivered to the White House, and I ask unanimous consent 
that the text of that letter be placed in the Record following my 
remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. DOLE. In this letter, we once again extend our invitation to the 
President, asking him to join us in a bipartisan effort to preserve, 
improve, and protect Medicare. It was precisely this type of bipartisan 
effort which saved Social Security in 1983, and it is what is needed 
today.
  And I know a little about the 1983 Social Security effort, because I 
was a member of that Commission, along with Democrats and members from 
the private sector, appointed by the then majority leader Howard Baker 
in the Senate, appointed by then Speaker O'Neill in the House, and 
President Reagan.
 And it worked. A lot of people felt at that time Social Security was 
in deep trouble, and it was in deep trouble. It was about to go broke. 
The trustees had warned us it was about to go broke. It warned us years 
ahead it was about to go broke. As often happens around this place, 
nobody really thought it was going to happen.

  When it finally became critical, we moved and we acted, and thanks to 
the efforts of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, both sides of 
the Capitol and President Reagan's effort, we were able to put together 
a compromise which, since 1983, has secured the solvency of the Social 
Security trust funds. In fact, Social Security is going to be in good 
shape for a fairly long time. Some day we will have to address it, but 
right now the 1983 Social Security fix has worked.
  It also appears to me that Treasury Secretary Rubin, Labor Secretary 
Reich, and Health and Human Services Secretary Shalala, all trustees, 
all of whom signed the report calling for action now have a great deal 
riding on the President's response.
  The President's inaction to this date suggests one of two things: 
Either he believes his trustees are incompetent and have reached an 
erroneous conclusion, or he accepts their conclusion and just does not 
believe it is the duty of his administration to solve the problem, in 
which case his trustees are irrelevant. Relevancy has been a matter of 
some debate around this town.
  If, however, he treats the recommendation of his trustees seriously, 
then he has only one choice: To stop searching for campaign issues and 
to join Congress in searching for solutions.
  I hope that the President, in the same spirit we have been working 
with the President on welfare reform, on antiterrorism legislation, on 
NAFTA, GATT, and other examples I can point out where Republicans 
provided the majority of the votes, working with a Democratic 
President, I hope the President of the United States will take a look 
at the trustees' report.
  I know there is a conference on aging, and I know the temptation 
frightens people, scares people and they may pick up a few seniors' 
votes for the President, but if we do not fix Medicare, as I have 
indicated, we are not going to be able to make the payments.
  The year 2002 seems like a long way off. Why worry about it in 1995? 
Let me just suggest, by the time you get it put together and by the 
time you start to implement it, the time will roll by more quickly than 
we think.
  I cannot speak for everyone on this side of the aisle, but I think 
most of my colleagues are ready and willing to make hard choices. We 
are not talking about cuts--the President says, ``Oh, we can't cut 
services, we can't do this, we can't do this.'' We are suggesting every 
dollar saved in our efforts to protect, preserve and improve Medicare 
go back into Medicare; not to cut taxes for the rich--as we hear from 
time to time from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle--or not 
for budget purposes, except so far as Medicare is part of the unified 
budget.
  So I hope that the President has received our letter and that he will 
seriously consider it and that he will come to the Capitol, or we can 
go to the White House--it makes no difference--or we can meet halfway, 
whatever, and talk about what we may do in a bipartisan way to begin 
working on what is a serious problem with Medicare.
  They are the President's trustees. They are people of integrity, as 
far as I know; people of competence, as far as I know; people of good 
judgment, as far as I know. I assume this trustees' report was based on 
the best information available and they said we should act now. Now 
means precisely what now means--now, 1995.
  So we are prepared to work with the President and members of this 
administration, we are prepared to work with our colleagues on both 
sides of the aisle, we are prepared to work with House Members, 
Democrats and Republicans, and my view is, if we are serious about 
this, we can do it in a very brief period of time.
  So I hope that we can have some response from the President.
  The other day I suggested we maybe have a bipartisan commission. That 
is how we made recommendations on Social Security in 1983. The 
President called that a gimmick. Well, it was not a gimmick. It was an 
idea that Speaker O'Neill had at the time and Majority Leader Baker and 
President Reagan had at the time, and it worked. It was not a gimmick. 
They made solid recommendations to Congress, and the Congress adopted 
the recommendations of the commission. I was proud to be a member of 
that commission, along with Claude Pepper, I might add, who was 
probably the seniors' greatest representative and voice in Congress, a 
Democrat from the State of Florida.
  So, Mr. President, I certainly hope the President will follow up.

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