[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 112 (Wednesday, July 12, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H6898]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                MEDICARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Longley). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to 
address my colleagues tonight with regard to some very important 
legislation the House will be taking up in the weeks and months ahead.
  With health care being so important and with making sure that our 
constituents get the kind of health care delivery that is so important, 
I am happy to see that the House is looking to two very important 
areas.
  The first one would be Medicare preservation. We know that within 7 
years, if nothing is done, Medicare, as we know it, will not be, in 
fact, here in the United States. So the Republicans and Democrats are 
working together to try to make sure that Medicare is preserved.
  In my own district of Montgomery County, PA, we have a Medicare 
preservation task force. We are having a meeting tonight for the 
purpose of having seniors and others who live in the district to come 
up with ways and means to make sure that we eliminate the fraud and 
abuse and waste that is in the system.
  The Congressional Budget Office has come up with the fact that, and 
the GAO, that in fact there is $44 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse 
in the Medicare and Medicaid systems. If we eliminate that kind of 
fraud, waste, and abuse, we will get to the heart of what has to be 
done to reform Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.
  Mr. KINGSTON. One of the things I want to make sure I understand 
clearly on Medicare is, I hear that the Republicans are changing it 
and, yet, is it not the Clinton-appointed Democrats who are saying that 
Medicare is going to be broke in under 6 years; is that correct?
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. That is correct. The fact is that the 
bipartisan task force studying Medicare has come up with the fact that, 
in fact, we will be out of money in 7 years. Most of the Clinton 
appointees, the Secretary of Health and Human
 Services and others, have clearly said we are going to have a problem. 
What is interesting about the President though is that he has come up 
with no solution for it.

  Mr. KINGSTON. But the gentleman, if he will continue to yield, it is 
the Clinton Democrats who are saying Medicare is going broke and yet it 
is Members of the Republican Party who are trying to preserve and 
strengthen Medicare through reforms?
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. What we are trying to do is make sure we 
eliminate the fraud, abuse, and waste in the system.
  Mr. KINGSTON. What has the Democrat leadership done through the 
Clinton administration or through the House to offer Medicare 
solutions?
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. They have been absent without leadership; 
there has been nothing at all.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Yet they are criticizing what we are trying to do when 
we talk about strengthening and preserving the system.
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. You are right. We are the ones who in this 
session have already met and worked with seniors to make sure that we 
help them earn beyond $11,028 a year, to make sure that in the next 5 
years if they earn $30,000 without deducting for Social Security, and 
we are also saying, the same leadership of this House that has always 
come forward with the idea of rolling back the unfair 1993 Social 
Security tax increase, we are here working in a bipartisan fashion, I 
believe, to try to come up with the kinds of solutions that are 
meaningful. And it may be that from our own districts, our own Medicare 
preservation task forces will see that managed care is an option. We 
will see that the fraud, abuse, and waste is certainly a part of the 
equation. We need to hear from the American public so that we can make 
sure we preserve and protect and expand Medicare.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, I have a chart here that I think goes to 
exactly what the gentleman is talking about. This is a quotation from 
the trustees of the Medicare trust fund. These are five people, men and 
women appointed by the President of the United States. It includes 
three members of the President's Cabinet, Cabinet Secretaries Shalala, 
Rubin, and Reich, and the specific quote here is that the fund, the 
Medicare Health Insurance Trust Fund is projected to be exhausted in 
2001.
  You have to ask yourself the question, is there a problem or is there 
not a problem? If there is a problem, then it seems to me that our 
responsibility as elected officials, as people who have been elected, 
Members of Congress that have been elected by the people in their 
districts to represent them, that if there is this problem that is a 
pressing problem, if it has been identified by the trustees of the 
President's trust fund, that we have an absolute responsibility to deal 
with that. And that if we do not deal with it, we are abrogating that 
responsibility in a way that is completely without precedent and 
terribly, terribly irresponsible in terms of the implications it has 
for the rest of the country.
  Mr. BAKER of California. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. BAKER of California. Mr. Speaker, what you are saying then is if 
we do nothing by 2002, the Medicare trust fund then becomes insolvent?
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. That is correct.
  Mr. BAKER of California. I think then we have an obligation, because 
we were elected by the people to preserve, protect and strengthen 
Medicare, not to kill it, that we have to take some action which will 
allow it to live beyond just our generation.
  Is that the point the gentleman is making, it that what the trustees, 
the Democrat members of the trustees have said?
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. That is correct.

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