[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 157 (Wednesday, October 11, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H9795]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         The LOCKBOX IS A SHAM

  (Mr. BENTSEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BENTSEN. Mr. Speaker, all along, the Republican Medicare plan has 
been nothing but a shell game to design to hide that they are cutting 
Medicare to pay for tax cuts for the rich. The American people were not 
fooled, and they quickly caught on that Medicare would have to be cut 
by $270 billion if the Republicans were not also trying to cut taxes by 
$245 billion.
  In fact, $150 billion of the Medicare cuts the Republicans propose 
having nothing to do with the insolvency proposed in part A, so the 
Republicans have now introduced a new gimmick: the so-called Medicare 
lockbox.
  Each new explanation only makes the Republicans look more and more 
like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The fact is we have 
a single Federal budget with a single bottom line. Tax cuts and 
Medicare expenditures are both part of that bottom line. If you cut 
taxes by $245 billion, then you have to make up the lost revenues in 
order to balance the budget by 2002. The Republicans make up that lost 
revenue by cutting Medicare.
  To claim that tax cuts are paid for from other cuts is absurd. The 
lockbox is a sham. Democrats want to fix Medicare as we always have, 
and the Republicans are not being honest about their intentions to raid 
Medicare to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

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