[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 162 (Thursday, October 19, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H10467-H10468]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       A DISASTROUS MEDICARE BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, today in this House many of us 
opposed a very bad bill, the Medicare ``reform'' bill that cut Medicare 
$270 billion to give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. It 
weakened fraud provisions in a series of back-room deals with the AMA 
and with other organizations to roll back a lot of fraud provisions 
that would have allowed us to more aggressively go after those people 
that cheat the system.
  The Inspector General's office has said that 10 percent of Medicare 
expenditures go to fraud, waste and abuse. We need to aggressively go 
after that. Instead, this House today turned its back on that. So, at 
the same time as this House made Medicare cuts, it weakened fraud 
provisions. It gave $245 billion in tax breaks to the wealthiest 
individuals in this country and the largest corporations in this 
country.
  Perhaps equally disturbing as the bill itself, which I think is a 
disaster, was the process that led up to this vote today right up until 
we actually cast our votes.
  Some weeks ago, the Speaker and the Republican leadership simply said 
there were going to be no hearings on this issue, no hearings in 
committee on Medicare, no hearings on this issue on Medicaid. We tried 
over and over asking for hearings, requesting of my committee chairman, 
the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Bliley], in the Committee on Commerce. 
The same went on in 

[[Page H 10468]]
the Committee on Ways and Means. They simply turned a deaf ear not just 
to us, maybe we do not matter much, but turned a deaf ear to the 
American people, the people that wanted to come in and talk about what 
this Medicare bill was really about.
  So while there were back-room deals, the American Medical Association 
and other groups got into the back room with the Republican leadership, 
the elderly were not even allowed in the hearing rooms to testify on 
this bill.
  One lady in the Committee on Commerce a couple of weeks ago came in, 
tried to testify, was gaveled down. Eventually, within a few minutes, 
15 elderly people, some in wheelchairs, some with canes, all of them I 
believe over 70 years old, were arrested and hustled out of the 
committee room, taken down into the basement. Several of them were 
handcuffed. All of them were taken to the police station in paddy 
wagons and fingerprinted and mug-shotted. It was a pretty amazing 
spectacle.
  Then today, almost as disturbing, the Speaker of the House stood on 
this floor and said something, and I am sure he did not knowingly do 
this, but said something that clearly was not true about a provision in 
the bill that the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey] had talked 
about, a provision in the bill that has been removed from the Medicaid 
bill that allowed elderly widows, some 11 million in this country that 
literally had their Medicare premiums paid for because they were so 
poor that they could not pay for them, and particularly when they go 
from $46 to $90 or $100, whatever the Gingrich Medicare bill ends up 
raising them to, that money was taken away from them.
  The Speaker may have been confused or it may have been bad staff 
work. It may have simply been all the late-night deals that were cut as 
the bill was changed as late as last night in the middle of the night, 
and he was simply confused.
  I have only been here 3 years, but there is this new arrogance to 
this place that I have never seen and heard of before, but it is 
particularly disturbing when those kinds of things are said on the 
floor because of either confusion or bad staff work, but the process 
has been so closed that people have not had a chance to really learn 
about what is in this bill.

  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. 
Pallone].
  Mr. PALLONE. I appreciate the gentleman yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, there was obviously confusion in the Speaker's mind, but 
there really should be no confusion about this issue. Because, as the 
gentleman knows, I offered this amendment in our Committee on Commerce 
to make sure that in Medicaid these qualified Medicare beneficiaries 
were going to have their part B premiums covered.
  The gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Rush] offered the same amendment on 
the Medicare bill in the Committee on Commerce, the bad bill that we 
considered today; and I went before the Committee on Rules yesterday 
and asked that the amendment be considered as part of the bill today, 
had a dialogue with the members of the Committee on Rules, including 
the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Linder] who was there, and explained 
that we wanted to make sure that there was a guarantee in the Medicare 
bill for these widows and these low-income senior citizens for which 
the Federal Government now pays their part B premium.
  It is true, it may very well be that the Speaker misunderstood, but 
there is no excuse for it. Because in fact on three different occasions 
we have asked for this to be considered, on two occasions in this bill. 
The Committee on Rules denied the opportunity to have that amendment 
considered. The bill that we had today did not have the guarantee that 
those Part B premiums for those low-income seniors would be paid.
  I think what the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey] said is 
absolutely correct. We should go back to the Committee on Rules next 
week, ask that it be considered again in concert with the Medicaid 
bill. But I am really outraged over the fact that the suggestion was 
made today that somehow this guarantee was in the bill. It is not in 
the bill; it is not in the Medicaid bill; and we, all of us 
collectively, have tried very hard to make sure the guarantee was there 
and it is not there.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. None of this would have happened, I think, if we 
had had hearings. There were dozens of hearings on Waco and Randy 
Weaver and Whitewater but no hearings on Medicare and Medicaid which 
affect everybody in this country.
  I think the Speaker misspoke and was probably confused but sort of 
attacked our friend from Massachusetts by name. Surely if we had had 
hearings and not had these late-night deals and really, as a country, 
really discussed Medicare, Medicaid and what it means to senior 
citizens, you do not cut $270 billion to give tax breaks to the rich.

                          ____________________