[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 81 (Tuesday, May 16, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H4962]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         COMMENTS ON THE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] is recognized during 
morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, I have some charts that I wanted to share with 
you this morning that talk about the budget, because we are going to be 
talking about the budget all week and are going to be passing for the 
first time since 1969 a balanced budget resolution. It will show a very 
important number at the end of the year 2002. It is a small number, it 
is a round number, it is the zero number, and that is going to be the 
amount of the deficit in 2002.
  I want to show you this chart to begin with because I think it pretty 
well delineates where the problems are with the budget that we have to 
get control of. This is essentially the President's budget here. What 
you see is projections from 1995 to 2002. You will see the two accounts 
that are increasing or projected to increase twice as fast as any 
others, and those are Medicare and Medicaid, the medical accounts. Ten 
percent for Medicare, 10.3 percent for Medicaid. What about Social 
Security? Five point three percent.
  One of the arguments that you are going to hear this week from the 
other side repeatedly is that well, we cannot possibly slow the rate of 
growth of health care spending, Medicare and Medicaid, because of the 
demographics, more people coming into the system, and because of 
inflation. Your numbers do not take that into account.
  The fact is that Social Security takes that exactly and precisely 
into account, and, as you can see, the Social Security number increases 
at 5.3 percent per year. That is in the projected budget. This is our 
number, this is the President's number, this is current law. This is 
the say that it is, because we are not touching Social Security in this 
budget.
  Yet, adding the same new seniors, because you qualify for Medicare at 
the same time you qualify for Social Security, and taking into account 
a cost of living adjustment, a COLA, and that does not even reflect the 
small adjustment we are projecting is going to take place in CPI, you 
can see that clearly Social Security does not run out of control, but 
Medicare and Medicaid do. So this is where the problem is with the 
Federal budget. This is where the challenge is in getting it under 
control.
  The other here, which is everything else, is at 4.1 percent. If we 
move that down to about a 2-percent rate of growth, we win. Winning 
means winning for our children, it means winning for the future of this 
country, and winning for the next generation.
  Let us look at the trust fund itself. This is the part A trust fund, 
Medicare. Empty in 2002. You can see, according to the projections, if 
we do not change things, this is where we will be in 2002. There will 
not be any money in that trust fund account.
  I think better than the graphic illustration of it is exactly what 
the Medicare trustees concluded on April 3, 1995. This is under the 
worst case scenario. They said, ``The fund is projected to be exhausted 
in 2001.''
  Now, who said this? Is this a partisan statement by Republicans who 
are trying to fearmonger so that senior citizens are worried they will 
not have Medicare to look forward to? Is that who is saying this? Is 
this created by Citizens Against Government Waste or the AARP? Has this 
been created by the Heritage Foundation or Cato Institute? Is it an 
interest group?
  No, it is not. It is the trustees, the President's trustees, the 
trustees that must be appointed to guard the assets, to safeguard the 
future of the Medicare trust fund. Robert Rubin, Robert Reich, Donna 
Shalala, three members of the President's Cabinet. The fund is 
projected to be exhausted in 2001.
  So what do we do? What is our solution? What we say is we are going 
to increase spending from $158 billion in 1995 to $258 billion in 2002. 
We are going to increase spending at the same rate of growth that 
Social Security is increasing, is growing. In other words, the same 
rate of growth that a very similar program that is a Federal program is 
increasing at, 5 or so percent. That is what we are increasing 
Medicare. That is not just on a gross basis, but also on a per capita 
basis, from $4,700 to $6,300 per recipient in the budget we are going 
to pass this week. It increases about 5 percent per year, the same 
amount as Social Security.
  I bring this to your attention because what you are going to hear 
from the other side this week is a repeated chorus, a litany, over and 
over and over again, that we are cutting Medicare and that this is 
going to hurt seniors. These are the facts. Keep the facts in mind.


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