[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 164 (Monday, October 23, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15416-S15418]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       BUDGET RECONCILIATION ACT

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, let me, first of all, thank my colleague 
from Mississippi for the work he has done, as have many on this side of 
the aisle, to bring about this Budget Reconciliation Act that we will 
be debating later on this week that is so critical to the economic 
viability of our country.
  For this Senator, it is absolutely exciting to stand on the floor and 
speak the words ``balanced budget,'' and, for the first time in all of 
the years that I have had the privilege of serving my State, for those 
words to actually mean something.
  Starting in the early eighties, I and others, when I was serving in 
the House, began a movement that went nationwide to bring about a 
constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. We knew that the 
Congress could not control or curb its spending appetite, and, of 
course, history proves that we were somewhat right. It was not until 
the American people spoke so loudly last year on the issue of debt and 
deficit that finally this Congress got the message, and the message 
was: Stop spending, control the fiscal purse strings of our Government, 
and bring about a balanced budget.
  Of course, as most of us know--and the public was watching--we missed 
by one vote in producing a balanced budget amendment for the citizens 
of this country to consider, which would really then put ourselves on a 
path toward a balanced budget.
  Over the course of the last 6 months, all of the appropriate 
committees have worked hard to produce a responsible document that we 
could honestly turn to the American people and say, ``We are speaking 
to your wishes. More importantly, we are speaking to what you told us 
to do last November, and that was to bring about a balanced budget.''
  We will begin debate later this week on the Balanced Budget 
Reconciliation Act of 1995, and it does some very, very profound and 
important things for this country. But more importantly, it does some 
important things for our Government. It puts goals in place, it puts 
parameters into a dynamic process that cause this Congress to be the 
fiscally responsible Congress that the American people have so demanded 
for way too long.
  My colleague from Mississippi began to outline the kinds of efforts 
that are incorporated in this critical piece of legislation that bring 
together all of the efforts of this Congress over the last good many 
months into a final document that will submit to the President a 
process and a procedure that brings us to a balanced budget by the year 
2002.
  The thing that I find most important about it is that while we were 
debating the balanced budget amendment, those from the other side cried 
and pleaded with the American people that Republicans were only going 
to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly and 

[[Page S 15417]]
we would do so by using Social Security.
  Well, I say to the folks from the other side, it just ``ain't'' so. 
It was not then and it is not now. The Social Security trust funds are 
not being used and will not be used and Social Security is every bit as 
strong today and next year and the year after through the year 2002 as 
we had promised during that historic debate of a good number of months 
ago.
  In fact, if you look at the year 2002, and if you want to take it 
just one step forward to the year 2005, when you look at the projection 
of the surpluses that begin to grow, you can argumentatively say that 
Social Security is totally aside, totally apart from the budget 
calculations by the year 2005 based on that surplus growth if--if--the 
Congress of the United States will be true to its commitment, and that 
commitment will be spoken to this week in this most important and 
historic act.
  I said during the balanced budget debate of a good number of months 
ago, if you are worried about Social Security and its stability, then 
you have to be worried about debt and deficit, because if you really 
want to protect Social Security and you want to show to the American 
seniors that you mean it, then you have to control debt.
  The solvency of our Government means its ability to pay its 
obligations. If the Congress of the United States and greedy big 
Federal spenders want to destroy Social Security, then they want to 
keep mounting debt, because there could come a day when we could not 
pay our bills, and Social Security, like everything else, is a bill or 
an obligation of the Government to pay to the recipients of the program 
that which it was committed to. Control the debt, as we are doing now 
with the Budget Reconciliation Act, and you will do nothing but 
strengthen Social Security in the coming years.
  Mr. President, there is one other item in this whole debate that is 
so critical for us here in Congress to understand but, more 
importantly, for the American people to have a clear and unfettered 
message of. It was spoken well this morning in an editorial in the 
Washington Times called ``The Great Medi-Scare.''
  I ask unanimous consent to have this editorial printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                          The Great Medi-Scare

       Congressional Democrats, who have been flailing about in 
     the desperate hope of bumping into an issue that will 
     leverage them back into power, think they have finally got 
     it. As Republicans in the House celebrated their party-line 
     victory on legislation to reform Medicare, Democrats 
     attempted to taunt them, childishly waving their hands and 
     mouthing ``bye, bye.''
       This undignified spectacle came after a day chock full of 
     those impassioned, if not unhinged, speeches House Democrats 
     have been cranking out denouncing the GOP--``It's another day 
     of infamy for 40 million Americans who depend on Medicare,'' 
     railed Florida Rep. Sam Gibbons; the bill is an affront to 
     ``human decency'' cried House Minority Leader Richard 
     Gephardt. But if the Republicans' vote was indecent and 
     infamous, how do Democrats explain their expression of glee? 
     The display suggests that one of several unpleasant 
     conclusions must be drawn about the new minority party: 
     Either the Democrats are happy to see seniors suffer just so 
     long as that misery is their ticket back to power; or the 
     Democrats know full well that their apocalyptic 
     pronunciamentos are hollow, in which case they were doing 
     nothing worse than celebrating what they think was a 
     successful scare campaign.
       Exactly how successful has the scare campaign been? There 
     is a belief among Democrats and some political analysts that 
     Republicans are making a fatal error by even attempting to 
     reform Medicare. The specter of seniors mobbing Rep. Dan 
     Rostenkowski is raised time and again, a mere prelude, we are 
     to believe, of the elderly's wrath to come. The thought gives 
     comfort to the Gibbonses and Gephardts and is supposed to put 
     fear in the hearts of Republicans. But Medicare reform and 
     Rosty's catastrophic-care legislation are by no means 
     analogous. Medicare reform merely limits the rate of growth 
     in the program, boosting seniors' costs marginally if they 
     remain in traditional fee-for-service Medicare, and saving 
     money for many of the elderly who choose one of the various 
     insurance options to be offered for the first time--such as 
     medical savings accounts. In any case, once all the hype has 
     died down, seniors will realize that their benefits are in 
     tact, and their out-of-pocket expenses have not exploded. 
     That was not the case with Rosty's catastrophic legislation.
       The new entitlement that Mr. Rostenkowski briefly imposed 
     on the nation in 1989--before it was withdrawn in the face of 
     vociferous protest--was financed in a way that fit liberal 
     sensibilities very nicely, but enraged the segment of the 
     elderly population that got stuck with the bill. Instead of 
     spreading the costs out among all taxpayers, wealthy seniors 
     were forced to pick up the tab almost exclusively. Paying for 
     the whole program meant that there was a distinct population 
     of senior citizens who were hit with new taxes of $800 a 
     year. Is it any wonder they rioted? It is hard to imagine 
     that senior citizens whose Medicare premiums go up $4 more 
     than they would have otherwise will react with quite the same 
     fervor and gusto as those who took an $800 hit. In other 
     words, liberals who think the Republicans' Medicare reform 
     will produce a catastrophic backlash are engaged in wishful 
     thinking.
       Once the Republican plan is up and running, the 
     scaremongering will have no more resonance. Perhaps, however, 
     House Democrats are counting on the reforms never becoming 
     law; President Clinton has, after all, promised to veto the 
     legislation. But Capitol Hill Democrats should know by now 
     that they can't rely on Mr. Clinton--a fact that was in stark 
     relief last week when the president blamed his long-suffering 
     allies on the Hill for his whopping 1993 tax hikes. There is 
     every reason to believe that when Mr. Clinton is confronted 
     with the prospect of a government shutdown, the veto pen will 
     stay in his pocket. Republican leaders no doubt will toss the 
     president a few face-saving changes on Medicare and other 
     budget items, and Mr. Clinton will acquiesce, much as he did 
     on this year's rescission bill.
       Then where will congressional Democrats be? They may yet be 
     waving bye-bye--that is, from their seats on the Greyhound.

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, the great medi-scare. Oh, my goodness, I 
watched with great interest this past week when the House voted by a 
very large bipartisan vote to reform Medicare. The wringing of hands 
and the gnashing of teeth from the other side of the aisle, from 
liberals who wanted to argue that this would be the destruction of 
health care as we know it to the seniors of our society, how tragic 
that kind of debate is in an attempt to split people, to use scare 
tactics to anger and frustrate the American people when what we are 
doing is exactly what Congress has done ever since Medicare was created 
by this Congress: To manage it on a yearly or biyearly basis and, 
whenever necessary, to make adjustments and changes in the program to 
make sure it could continue to provide the kind of health care 
reimbursement that it has historically provided.
  How many times has the Congress addressed changes in Medicare? Almost 
too many to count since it was created back in the seventies. Why? 
Because we are the board of directors of Medicare. It is our job to 
make sure it is solvent, to make sure it works, to make sure it honors 
its commitment to that portion and that share of the senior citizen 
dollar that goes in in the form of premiums, to pay that dollar that is 
matched with the Federal dollar. And, as a result, Medicare has always 
been there, and it will always be there.

  I am sorry, I say to those who have no better answer and are trying 
to use the emotion of senior citizens in this country as the political 
tactics of 1996, folks, it is not going to work because already the 
seniors have seen through it. They have recognized that they have been 
used over the years in the arguments of Social Security reform, and now 
they are being used--I repeat the word ``used''--in the arguments of 
changing Medicare when, in fact, what we are doing is creating new 
dynamics in a program that will allow seniors greater choice, greater 
opportunity, and greater independence in their health care delivery 
systems.
  Why should they not be allowed to choose between a provider fee 
system, between HMO's, between a variety of other options that are out 
there? The important words are ``allowed to choose,'' not being forced 
or not being shoved into a new program, but being allowed to choose a 
variety of options, including staying exactly where they are today.
  Now, because we have never offered that choice in the past, the 
dynamics of the Medicare trust funds have not had the flexibility to 
create the efficiencies that we ought to have. As a result, the costs 
of those funds, based on demand, escalated at over 10.4 percent a year 
when private health care costs last year were 4 percent, and this year 
could be 4 percent. Why is it that a Federal health care program is not 
at least reflecting and mirroring the cost of private health care? 
Because it is 

[[Page S 15418]]
federally rigid; because the rules and regulations will not allow the 
dynamics in the marketplace of choice, independence, and of selection 
that every other citizen in our country has. That is exactly what we 
are providing. Yet, the opposition is saying it is going to destroy it. 
They are trying to use it as a political tactic.
  Why do I talk about the Balanced Budget Reconciliation Act and 
Medicare all at the same time? Because it is all of a total budget that 
this Congress has to look at. It is part of the kind of reform that is 
critical when it relates to the dynamics of making the kinds of overall 
savings that produces a balanced budget by the year 2002 and honors the 
commitment we have had to the American people that we are going to 
start being fiscally responsible and we are not going to be continually 
running up debt that is now at $4.8 or $4.9 trillion and accumulating 
faster than the average citizen can absolutely comprehend.
  If we will do anything this year, we will be able to turn to the 
American people and say, we heard you, we listened, and we responded, 
and we have set the Government on a course of action that will cause us 
to be fiscally responsible, that will allow us to look out into the 
future and say, we have indebted our children less, and we will allow 
them to have greater freedoms of opportunity in selecting their jobs 
and keeping more of their own made money for the purposes of providing 
for themselves and their children.
  That is what this debate is all about. We are going to look at it 
program by program, detail by detail, going through Wednesday, 
Thursday, and into Friday of this week. I hope the American people are 
listening because what they will hear in the end will not be 
frightening. It will be a very loud, clear, analytical debate, program 
by program, on what this Congress is doing to control a runaway budget. 
And that is exactly what they expect us to do.
  To the seniors of this country, please listen, do not be frightened 
by what is known as scare mongering. That is what this editorial was 
saying; that the Democrats are running to the only thing that will 
resonate at this moment--scare mongering--instead of working with us in 
a constructive way to maintain a dynamic and important program for this 
country.
  I remember back in the early 1980's when Social Security was in 
trouble and I was a freshman legislator on the other side. Those who 
were in control of the Congress at that time--the Democrat Party--tried 
just that. Ronald Reagan said, ``Oh, no, you don't. I am going to bring 
you, the Congress, and the Presidency together, in a bipartisan way, 
and we are going to fix this problem. There is not going to be any 
fear, there is not going to be any fright. We are going to create the 
dynamics that assures the stability of Social Security on into the 
future.''
  He pulled their scare mongering platform out from under them. As a 
result, we got a phenomenally dynamic, bipartisan process that 
stabilized Social Security as it is today and will into the future if 
we balance the budget and take the debt fear away. That is the same 
responsibility we have with Medicare. I challenge my colleagues on the 
other side--down with your bright line graphs, down with your rhetoric, 
and up with your willingness to work with us to create a bipartisan 
dynamics, both in the budget process and in the securing of a stable 
Medicare Program that we can turn to the American people and say, we 
heard you, we honored you, and we are committed to a stable Government 
in the future that lives within its means.
  I yield the remainder of my time.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas [Mrs. Hutchison] is 
recognized.

                          ____________________