[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 207 (Friday, December 22, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S19182-S19184]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                VETERANS

  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I wish to associate myself with the 
remarks of the distinguished Senator from Texas. I am reassured that 
the leader will try to work out this matter with respect to the 
veterans. The Senator from Texas has taken a lead on this. Senator 
Simpson, the chairman of the Veterans Committee, and myself and the 
Senator from Texas will be monitoring this through the day.
  Thank you very much.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I know we have before us an extremely 
important measure which Senator Lugar and Senator Pell are going to 
lead and manage on the floor.
  I had an opportunity to talk to both Senator Pell and Senator Lugar. 
It is with their acquiescence that they are going to permit me to speak 
very, very briefly on another matter and that those comments would be 
at an appropriate place in the Record.
  So I do not intend to be more than 5 or 6 minutes. But it is on a 
matter which I think needs addressing.

[[Page S19183]]


                        CAMPAIGN DISINFORMATION

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the Republican campaign of disinformation 
on their unfair Medicare cuts continues in full swing. Now it has 
reached a new low with a gross distortion of the views on Medicare of 
President Clinton and the First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. A 
television advertisement, sponsored by the Republican National 
Committee, purports to show Mrs. Clinton endorsing the deep Medicare 
cuts in the Republican budget plan.

  The advertisement is a good example of the depths to which the 
Republican Party is willing to sink in order to defend its unfair and 
destructive plan to slash Medicare. The ad transposes a statement from 
1993 about the Clinton plan and tries to make it appear that it is an 
endorsement of the Republican program. It ignores three central facts. 
The Republican plan slashes Medicare to pay for tax breaks for the 
wealthy, but every dollar of Medicare savings in the Clinton plan was 
put back into expanded health benefits for the elderly. The Republican 
plan is rigged to force senior citizens to give up their family doctor 
and join private insurance plans, but the Clinton plan strengthened 
Medicare and preserved the right to choose ones own doctor. The 
Republican plan actually raises costs for working families and will 
increase the number of the uninsured, but the Clinton plan controlled 
costs throughout the health system and guaranteed coverage for all.
  The first grave distortion is that the advertisement seems to show 
Mrs. Clinton endorsing the Republican plan. But, in fact, the clip came 
from 1993 and showed Mrs. Clinton discussing the administration's own 
health care program.
  Equating the Medicare cuts in the Clinton 1993 health reform plan 
with the cuts in the current Republican budget plan ignores several 
fundamental facts.
  Every dollar cut from Medicare under the Clinton plan was reinvested 
in expanded health services for the elderly. The Clinton plan provided 
long overdue new coverage in key areas of Medicare where the greatest 
gaps now exist--prescription drugs and long-term care.
  Under the Clinton plan, senior citizens would have been vastly better 
off. Under the current Republican plan, they will be vastly worse off. 
Every senior citizen will pay an additional $1,200 in premiums over the 
next 7 years. Every elderly couple will pay $2,400 more. Senior 
citizens already pay 21 percent of their limited incomes for health 
care. Their median income is only $17,000 a year. They are already 
facing increases in their private Medigap insurance that will average 
30 percent next year. The Medicare cuts and Medicare premium increase 
under the Republican plan will only make their plight worse.
  The Republican plan slashes $117 billion out of Medicaid as well, 
even though two-thirds of all Medicaid spending is for senior citizens 
and the disabled, including essential nursing home care.
  The Republican plan is also rigged to force senior citizens to give 
up their family doctor, leave Medicare, and join private insurance 
plans. The Clinton health reform plan preserved Medicare. It preserved 
senior citizens' right to keep their family doctors. It did not slash 
Medicare to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy.
  Equally important, the Clinton health care reform was not limited to 
Medicare or Medicaid. It assured health care for every American. By 
contrast, the Republican budget plan ignores the need for overall 
reform. In fact, it endangers the quality of care for all those on 
Medicare and Medicaid, and many others as well.
  It is estimated that one-quarter of all hospitals will have to 
substantially curtail services or will even have to close. The total 
number of the uninsured could soar to 60 million by 2002.
  The respected consulting firm of Lewin-VHI has estimated that the 
Republican Medicare and Medicaid cuts could add $70 billion to the 
health care costs of businesses and workers. Every worker could pay 
$1,000 more over the next 7 years as a result of this Republican 
proposal. This is a program for higher costs and greater health 
insecurity for every working family--not lower costs and greater health 
care security.
  A final important point is that the Clinton plan would have reduced 
health care costs throughout the entire health care system. The 
Republican plan would cut costs only in Medicare and Medicaid. It would 
therefore perpetuate the current trend toward two health care systems, 
separate and unequal--a first class system for the affluent who can 
afford it, and an unfair system for everyone else--especially senior 
citizens and the needy.
  What the Republican plan has in mind for Medicare and Medicaid today 
is vastly different from what the President and Mrs. Clinton had in 
mind in their 1993 plan. Republican tactics of obstruction prevented 
Congress from acting on that plan. The current Republican plan would go 
further in the wrong direction.
  No one has fought harder for health care for all Americans than 
President Clinton and the First Lady. The Republican TV ad is a cynical 
attempt to manipulate the public. It deserves to be repudiated for what 
it is--a devious and descriptive distortion. If this is a harbinger of 
things to come, the country is in for a long winter's night of 
Republican dirty tricks.
  Mr. President, over the past few days, there have been television 
advertisements which have inaccurately portrayed Mrs. Clinton in her 
testimony, I believe it was before the Ways and Means Committee. From 
these advertisements, one could gather that the President of the United 
States and Mrs. Clinton were basically at odds in terms of amounts of 
cuts on Medicare spending.
  What has been left out of the ad is that Mrs. Clinton's testimony, 
about 2 years ago, was given in support of the President's health care 
reform program. During the time of the President's program, there were 
going to be reductions in the escalation of overall spending, but all 
of the savings that were going to be achieved under the Medicare 
Program were going to be plowed back into the Medicare system with 
relief for our senior citizens on prescription drugs and also on long-
term care.
  So the characterization that Mrs. Clinton is for cutting back 
Medicare and therefore is in basic agreement with the Republican 
position is a complete distortion and serious misrepresentation. It is 
particularly harsh when you look at the totality of the spending cuts 
not only in the Medicare provision under the Republican plan but also 
in the Medicaid Program which affects so many of our seniors, 
particularly those in nursing homes.
  Then if you look at the increase in Medicare premiums and also the 
policy implications of the Republican Medicare proposal, I think these 
would dampen the opportunities for our seniors to choose their own 
family physician or remain in the kind of Medicare system that we 
currently know in this country. No one who followed the health care 
reform debate and discussion over the last 2 years and listened to Mrs. 
Clinton could come to any other conclusion than that these Republican 
ads are a clear distortion and misrepresentation.
  I find it particularly troublesome when the final representations are 
made on that ad that suggest there is a duplicitousness between the 
President's position and Mrs. Clinton. There is nothing further from 
the truth. And to portray that ad out there as being the real truth in 
conflict with the representations that Mrs. Clinton has stood for in 
terms of Medicare reform and our own health care reform initiatives, I 
think is a real gross distortion.
  I finally say, Mr. President, as anyone who followed that debate 
understood, Mrs. Clinton was talking about the totality of savings that 
were to be achieved under a comprehensive reform program which is 
really the only way we are going to be able to proceed if we are going 
to have effective kinds of cost containment and control.
  So I just wanted to take a moment of the Senate's time to give, 
certainly, my impression of that ad and to make my colleagues keenly 
aware of exactly what Mrs. Clinton was testifying to and what her 
position was in 1993. It has been distorted. It has been 
misrepresented. I think it is a serious disservice.
  I see in the Chamber my friend and colleague from West Virginia, 
Senator Rockefeller, who is a real leader in the battle for 
comprehensive reform, and I inquire of him whether his view 

[[Page S19184]]
about that ad is similar to the one that I have just represented?
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. In responding to the Senator from Massachusetts, it 
is really a matter, I think, of fundamental shock as well as distortion 
of truth that these ads are portraying. What we have been doing in the 
course of this particular year 1995 is looking at Medicare and Medicaid 
all by themselves without any sort of thought about comprehensive 
health care reform at all, which means it is like you are trying to 
take a gigantic system and just reorganize one part of it.
  What Mrs. Clinton was talking about a year or more ago in this 
television ad, she was in the process of leading an effort, along with 
the President and the rest of us, which did not succeed, to try to 
reform health care as a whole and to really give a chance for Medicare 
and Medicaid to take their proper role within a reformed total health 
care system in the private sector.
  So to the Senator from Massachusetts, I would say he is absolutely 
right. All of those cuts she was talking about were being plowed right 
back into Medicare, into senior citizens in the form of prescription 
drugs and long-term care. Because there were tremendous efforts being 
made to control costs in the private sector, there was not any of the 
cost-shifting involved that we are seeing in the debate this year 
because it was comprehensive health care, cost control within the 
private sector, plus the fact that you were not going to have, back 
then, the situation of doctors refusing to see patients, Medicare 
patients because perhaps the fee would not be adequate, or you 
certainly would not have seniors being forced into HMO's and other 
things. So the choosing of the doctor, the fact that the money was all 
being put back into Medicare really makes the perpetrators of this ad a 
rather shameful lot, and it is a tremendous disservice to Mrs. Clinton, 
who did everything that a human could possibly do to try to make health 
care better for all Americans.

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator, and I particularly 
wish to thank my friends and colleagues, the floor managers, Senator 
Lugar and Senator Pell. This matter which is before the Senate now is 
extremely important, and I am grateful to them for their courtesy in 
letting us address the Senate briefly on this matter.
  I thank the Chair.
  Mr. BINGAMAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak as 
if in morning business for up to 6 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.

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