[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 152 (Wednesday, September 27, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H9577-H9578]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE DEMOCRAT PLAN IS BETTER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Barrett] 
is recognized for 30 minutes to conclude the time designated for the 
minority.
  Mr. BARRETT of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I want to pay tribute to the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Mineta] too. As a newer Member I can say 
that the highest compliment I can pay him is that I consider him a 
normal person. He is a person who is very approachable, one who has 
treated the younger, newer Members with a lot of respect, and I think 
he has done a great job for this institution, and I am sorry to see him 
leaving this fine institution.
  Mr. Speaker, I was in my office earlier tonight, and I was listening 
to some of the discourse on the floor here and several of my colleagues 
talking about the Medicare debate that is going on in the House right 
now, and I was listening to one of my colleagues talking about the 
terrible crisis, the terrible crisis we are facing in Medicare and how 
can the Democrats possibly ignore the crisis, that this system is 
falling apart, that we have to do something now, right now, to insure 
stability for people in this country to have health care.
  Mr. Speaker, as I was listening to that debate, I thought back to my 
hometown of Milwaukee, and I thought back to two older women I know in 
my community that I had the pleasure of working with several years ago, 
and there were two sisters who lived together, and they were living in 
the home that they had owned for many, many years, and they noticed 
there was some water in the basement, and they thought, ``Well, we 
should deal with this problem. We are willing to pay the price to fix 
the damage of water in our basement.''
  So what they did was they called the contractor, and the contractor 
came out and said, ``Yes, there is water in your basement. The 
foundation of your home is collapsing. We are going to have to tear 
down a wall and rebuild it.''
  Well, the two older women were on fixed incomes, and obviously they 
were very shook up by this news, but they wanted to do the right thing, 
they wanted to pay their fair share, and they wanted to have the 
problem solved. So they agreed to do that. They agreed to pay several 
thousand dollars to have the wall replaced and rebuilt.
  Mr. Speaker, no sooner had these contractors ripped down and built up 
a new wall in the basement, than they came back to the two sisters and 
said, ``We have got even worse news for you. Doing the one wall isn't 
enough. We are going to have to rip down another wall, and rebuild that 
one.'' And ultimately it became a third wall.

                              {time}  2115

  The two sisters who had water in their basement and knew they had a 
problem, a problem that had to be solved, were faced with basically a 
$10,000 bill for having three walls rebuilt in their basement.
  What does that story have to do with Medicare? The reason that story 
is similar to Medicare is because the people in this country, and the 
older people in this country, recognize that there are some problems 
with Medicare. They are willing to pay a fair price to have the 
Medicare problem resolved, to fix the system, to get the water out of 
the basement, to make sure their home is stable. However, they are not 
willing to be duped by con artists who come in and tell them that their 
whole house is crumbling; that instead of having to pay $1,000 or 
$2,000 to repair a problem, they are going to have to pay $10,000 or 
their entire house is going to collapse, and have the contractor run 
away with the money and pocket it for himself or for his friends.
  I think that story is very, very analogous to the debate going on in 
Congress right now. As this debate has unfolded, I have listened to my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk about the problems. I 
have tried to listen to them and agree with them where I think they are 
on the mark. But what I have noticed is while they make several 
statements that are true and that I agree with, and I think a majority 
of Americans agree with, they do not tell, as Paul Harvey would say, 
the rest of the story. That story, or the rest of that story, is why 
this Republican plan is so wrong, and should be rejected by this House.
  Let me start out by telling the parts of the story that are being put 
forth by the Republicans that I agree with. I agree that the President 
and his trustees have said that there are problems with the Medicare 
system. This is, of course, something they have said many times before, 
and Congress has always acted responsibly, without raising the flags 
and hooting and hollering and saying that the sky is falling. Congress 
has always addressed those problems. In fact, the trustees' report from 
last year says that the problem was worse than the problem this year. 
Of course, when the Democrats stepped to the plate to address the 
problem, the Republicans said they are too taking too much of a cut out 
of Medicare.
  But now the situation is different. Now the Republicans are in 
control. They are saying, ``Let us cut the growth.'' There is growth in 
Medicare, but they are saying, ``Let us cut that growth $270 billion,'' 
and at the same time they are saying, ``Let us give a $245 billion tax 
cut that disproportionately benefits the wealthy in this country.''
  I think what is going on there is very similar to the situation with 
the two older women with the basement. We do have some problems with 
Medicare. They should be fixed. They can be fixed for about $90 
billion.
  The other $180 billion is going to that tax cut that 
disproportionately benefits the wealthy in this country, and I think 
that is dead wrong. I think that is something that Congress should 
reject.
  Mr. Speaker, the other place where I agree with the Republicans, and 
I actually had my staff check this because so many times I heard 
Members from the Republican Party step in this well and say, ``Hey, 
there is growth in Medicare. We are not cutting spending. In fact,'' 
they say, ``the spending per recipient is going to go from $4,700 per 
recipient to $6,800 in the year 2002.''
  The first time I heard that, I thought, ``Wow, that sounds pretty 
good. It has gone from $4,700 per recipient to $6,080 per recipient.'' 
I actually did the math. It is a 45-percent increase. I thought, ``All 
right, I'm not going to dispute that. I'm not going to say they are not 
telling the truth, because I have checked the figures and they are 
going to be spending 45 percent more in the year 2002 than they are in 
the year 1995.''
  However, as I talked to seniors in my district, and discussed with 
them this issue, their reaction was ``Well, I'm not really that 
interested in what the spending is by the government per recipient, 
because that is the money that goes to physicians and hospitals and 
nursing homes, home health providers, groups like that. That really 
does not address the amount of money that I am paying out of my 
pocket.'' How much is that 68- or 69-year-old widow on a fixed income 
paying out of her pocket for Medicare? That is where we have to hear 
the rest of the story.
  Let us use the 2 years that the Republicans have used in bragging 
about the growth in Medicare. Let us use 1995, and let us use the year 
2002. Those are the 2 years that we have heard literally hundreds of 
times in this well talking about the growth of Medicare. Again, it is 
going to go from $4,700 or 

[[Page H 9578]]
$4,800 to $6,080 a year, a 45-percent increase.
  I have not heard a single Republican stand in this well and talk 
about what the premium growth is going to be over that same period. Not 
a single Republican has done what Paul Harvey does, and that is tell 
the rest of the story. Let us tell the rest of the story in terms of 
what the premium increases are going to be for that 68-year-old widow 
on a fixed income.
  Right now, that senior is paying $46.10 per month. It comes out to 
$500 a year, somewhere around there. Under the plan that is being put 
forth by the majority, by the Republican Party, that amount is going to 
go to $90 to $93 a month, at least. We have not seen the figures. We do 
not know how much of a shortfall there is going to be, but we can be 
certain it is going to go from $46.10 a month to at least $90 to $93 a 
month.
  Why have we not heard from the Republicans the rest of the story? Why 
have they not stood in the well to tell us that? The reason is obvious. 
The reason is because it is a 100-percent increase, that is, a 100-
percent increase in the amount that senior citizens are going to pay 
for monthly premiums.
  Again, it is important to note that I am using the same base year and 
the same outyear that the Republicans used when they brag about this 
45-percent increase in the spending per recipient. That figure is 
correct, the Republicans are correct, the Government will spend 45 
percent more per recipient. They are slowing the growth there. However, 
they are not slowing the growth as to what the recipients, what the 
beneficiaries, the widows in our communities, are going to be paying. 
So on the one hand, you see a 45-percent growth in what the Government 
is spending, but as far as that person who lives in the heartland, they 
are going to see a 100-percent increase under this plan.
  Let us use the figures a little bit and talk about how that compares 
to the tax package. If we have a senior citizen who is paying $90 to 
$93 a month for their benefits under Medicare, that comes out to just 
about $1,100 a year. If you are a senior citizen who is on a fixed 
income of $8,000 a year, and your rent is, say, $500 a month, right 
there you are talking $6,000. You are going to put another $1,100 for 
Medicare. What are they going to live on? What are they going to live 
on?
  Traditionally what we have done is we have allowed the States to use 
their Medicaid dollars to supplement that, to help them pay their 
premiums, but that is not something we want to do in this Congress. We 
are not going to require them to help pay their Medicare premiums. What 
is even more striking to me is that this Congress, under the bill that 
has not yet been introduced but that is being discussed, is going to 
have seniors paying $1,100 a year for Medicare premiums and at the same 
time it is going to tell a couple with an income of $200,000, who has 
two dependents, that they should get a tax credit of $1,000. So we are 
telling the couple with $200,000 income, ``You get a $1,000 tax 
credit,'' and we are telling the single widow on a fixed income, ``You 
are now going to pay $1,100 per year for your health care premiums 
under Medicare.''
  The response, of course, probably from my colleagues on the other 
side, ``We are just letting them pay the same percentage that they are 
paying now. They do not mention that under current law it is supposed 
to drop back down to 25 percent. They are saying, ``Let us just 
continue and have them pay 31\1/2\ percent.''
  That gets to the very essence as to why we are missing the boat in 
health care reform. There is absolutely no attempt being made to 
seriously deal with those costs. It does not matter to the people who 
are pushing this package that the costs are going to continue to rise. 
They are going to slow down what the Government plans to pay for those 
costs, but they are not seriously going to deal with the costs. They 
are going to allow that gap between what the Government pays and what 
the individual has to pay out of their pocket to grow and grow and 
grow, so the providers will not want to provide the services, hospitals 
will not want to provide the services, seniors will have to pay more 
out of their pocket, and all of this is being done so we can have a 
$245 billion tax cut that disproportionately benefits the wealthy in 
this country.
  Mr. Speaker, what do the American people want to have done? It is 
clear. The American people want the Medicare system to be working. They 
want to make sure that it does not fail, they want it to be fixed if 
there are problems, and I think we should do that. That is why the 
Democrats are now moving forward with their bill that will fix the 
problems of Medicare at the tune of $90 billion, not $270 billion, $90 
billion. The reason they can do it for $90 billion, rather than $270 
billion, is that they are not shaving $180 billion off. They are not 
building an extra two walls, if you will, or tearing down two walls in 
the basement that do not need to be torn down. They are solving the 
problem.
  The other issue we have to face is when the Republicans talk about 
fixing the system, they are not talking about fixing the system for the 
baby boomers, they are talking about plugging the hole for another 5 
years so the system will be flush through the year 2006.
  That is exactly what the Democratic proposal that is going to be 
introduced later this week is also going to do. It is going to take 
care of the problem through the year 2006, it is going to do so without 
doubling the premiums that senior citizens pay, it is going to do so in 
a fair way.
  They can do so in a fair way because it does not have this tradeoff 
that on the one hand says, ``All right, senior citizens, in the year 
2002 you are going to pay $1,100 for your health care premiums; a 
family with an income of $200, we are going to give you a $1,000 tax 
credit.''
  I would ask the people in this body to do what the American people 
want us to do. They want us to fix the health care system. They want us 
to get rid of the deficit. Those are their two major concerns. We can 
do both of those, we should do both of those, and we should forget 
about this tax cut that disproportionately benefits the wealthiest 
people in this country, because if we do that we can solve this 
problem, and we can do so without doubling the insurance premiums that 
the older people in this country pay each year.

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