[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 76 (Tuesday, May 9, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H4552-H4553]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     SUDDENLY A CRISIS IN MEDICARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, suddenly the Republican leadership has 
discovered a crisis in the funding of Medicare, and they want to fix 
it. Well, they are not sure they want to fix it. They want the 
President to make a proposal to cut Medicare spending over the next 
decade. They want the Democrats in Congress to make a proposal to cut 
Medicare spending over the next decade. Maybe they want a bipartisan 
commission to make proposals to cut Medicare spending over the next 
decade.
  The bottom line is they want someone to come out and get ahead of 
them and propose cuts in Medicare spending over the next decade, under 
the guise of saving Medicare from bankruptcy, a new crisis that no one 
could have anticipated a year ago during the health care debate. A year 
ago during the health care debate, we heard from Republican leaders on 
both sides of the Hill that there is no crisis in health care in 
America, none at all. We need no congressional action regarding health 
care. That was only 12 months ago.
  More recently, we had the much vaunted Contract on America, which 
laid out the 10 most important issues confronting the United States of 
America, the 10 must-do pieces of legislation to bring our country into 
the next century. And you know what? Medicare was not on the list. I 
guess there was not a crisis in Medicare, or at least they did not know 
about it, when they were writing the contract.
  Then we brought the contract to the floor again. Still, no mention of 
Medicare. We brought a dire emergency supplemental spending bill to the 
floor of the House; $2.3 billion additional for the Pentagon, because 
you cannot ask the Pentagon to do anything without giving them more 
money. We add a few billions of dollars for the crisis in California, 
for the earthquakes and the floods and various and assorted sundry 
other things that Congress always throws in when we do a dire emergency 
supplemental spending bill, but not a penny for Medicare. I guess 2 
months ago there was not a crisis in Medicare.
  What has happened since is the Republican leadership in this House 
pushed through a bill cutting revenues, cutting taxes, by $340 billion 
over the next 5 years. And guess what? Now they think we need to cut 
Medicare somewhere in the vicinity of $300 billion. But there is no 
linkage. There is no linkage between the massive tax cuts which they 
shoved through this Chamber for the largest, most profitable 
corporations, for foreign and multinational corporations, for people 
earning $200,000 a year, under the guise of some scant relief for 
middle income families and people with children. No, there was no 
crisis in Medicare then. But now there is.
  Suddenly there is a crisis in Medicare that just happens to come 
close to the amount of money that is proposed in the massive tax cuts. 
The crisis has come now because they have sat down and tried to write 
their budget, and they found out you cannot hold the Pentagon harmless 
and in fact increase their spending, you cannot hold all of that 
massive part of the Federal budget harmless. You cannot deal with the 
existing debt and the interest payments, and you cannot cut taxes and 
[[Page H4553]] balance the budget. It just simply is not there.
  So suddenly we have a crisis in Medicare that cries out for immediate 
action, for immediate cuts totaling 80 percent of the money they need 
to fund their tax cuts. No, the crisis is not so much in Medicare, and 
it is not a new crisis. In fact, Medicare, according to the trustees, 
is in better condition today than it was a year ago. They have put off 
its potential insolvency for 12 months into the next century.
  No, the crisis is in the corporate board rooms. The crisis is in the 
country club cocktail lounges. The crisis is that the Republicans in 
their contract promised the most powerful and the most wealthy and the 
most well off Americans a nice, big, fat, juicy tax cut, and they 
promised everybody else in America they would balance the budget. And 
now they want to balance the budget on the backs of the seniors by 
cutting Medicare to fund their tax cuts.
  Congress is going to say no to this outrage, this new abomination 
worse than the worst aspects of the first 100 days of this Congress.


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