[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 12, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H2111-H2114]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        OBJECTIVES OF NEW REPUBLICAN MAJORITY IN 104TH CONGRESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] is recognized for 
60 minutes.
  Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Speaker, it is not my intention to use the full hour, 
but I would like to address the Chamber in regards to a number of 
issues dealing with what we are seeking to do in this new 104th 
Congress, this new Republican majority.
  Mr. Speaker, I said earlier in part of a special order that former 
Prime Minister Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel, had said that 
politicians are elected by adults to represent the children. I am 
struck by the power of that statement, because really what our task is 
as Americans, certainly in government, is to leave this country better 
for the generation that will follow. That is what our forefathers did 
for us. They founded a country and left it better for us, and we have 
to leave it better for our children.
  Mr. Speaker, we have three main objectives in this Republican 
Congress: This is to seek to get our financial house in order and 
finally to balance our Federal budget, we are looking to save our trust 
funds, particularly Medicare, from insolvency, bankruptcy, and we are 
looking to transform our caretaking, social, corporate, even farming, 
welfare state into what I would refer to as a caring opportunity 
society.
  We are not looking to throw our hands into the air and say, ``Listen, 
this is not a problem with the government, you're on your own.'' We are 
looking to help people grow the seeds. We just do not want to keep 
handing them the food.
  We as Members of Congress have a solemn pledge to do a number of 
things, but obviously one of them is to vote on a Federal budget each 
year.
  What some of the listening audience may not know and something I did 
not fully grasp, even after I was elected a Member of Congress in 1987, 
was that whereas on the State level I voted on one budget, here in 
Washington we vote on 13 separate appropriations bills, but they only 
constitute one-third of all the spending that we do in Washington.
  When we vote out a budget, we are voting on one-third. When we vote, 
we vote on one-third. We think of how we spend one-third of the budget. 
Fifty percent of the budget is literally on automatic pilot. It is what 
we call our entitlements, it is food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, 
welfare for mothers and children. It is agricultural subsidies. You fit 
the title, you get the money. We in Congress do not vote on it each 
year. It is on automatic pilot.
  I can remember early on in my career as a Member of Congress, I would 
go back in a community meeting and I would say ``I voted to cut 
spending,'' and they said, ``I know you did, but how come it keeps 
going up?'' It is a good question. I went back to my office and I said, 
``How come if we keep voting to cut spending and they actually pass, 
the budget keeps going up?''
  I realized that in Washington, unlike any place I have ever been 
before, they use what they call a baseline budget. They say this is 
what it cost this year, and to run the same level of service, if it 
cost $100 million this year, and it is going to run to the same level 
of service, we spend $105 million to run the same level of service. So 
then if you only appropriate and spend $103 million, Washington calls 
it a $2 million cut.
  If it costs $100 million and you spend $103 million, how can you call 
it a cut? It is a $3 million increase. The argument is you have more 
people and you have inflation, and so that is the baseline. Therefore, 
anything cut from the baseline is cut. I guess that is how you get 
these outrageous predictions that when we have voted on the budget that 
we have cut things like the earned income tax credit. This is a payment 
that goes to a working person who pays no taxes because they do not 
make enough to pay taxes, so they actually get money from the Federal 
Government.

  The earned income tax credit was a program that was really 
inaugurated by Republicans but then expanded by Democrats, and the 
program is simply at a point where it will become the largest 
entitlement if we do not slow its growth. So we are allowing the 
program to grow from $19.9 billion in the last year to, in 2002, 6 
years from now, $25.4 billion. That is referred to as a cut, and yet it 
is going from $19.9 billion to $25.4 billion. Only in Washington when 
you spend that much more money do people call it a cut.
  The school lunch program, remembering the President and legislative 
leaders on the other side of the aisle literally going to schools, 
telling kids that they are going to lose their school lunch program 
because of what this new majority was doing in Congress. Yet when I 
look at that program, it is growing from $5.2 to $6.8 billion in the 
seventh year. Only in Washington when you go from $5.2 billion to $6.8 
billion do people call it a cut. It is not a cut, it is a significant 
increase in spending. Admittedly it is not growing at 5.2 percent, it 
is growing at 4.5 percent. Then we are allowing States to reallocate 20 
percent of that money for other programs dealing with food for Kids.
  The student loan program, I was outraged when I heard Republicans 
were going to cut the student loan program, because, I mean, that is 
what the President said and the President would be, it seems to me, 
wanting to be accurate in his statement. When I questioned my own 
colleagues, I wrestled with the fact that the student loan program last 
year was $24.5 billion. In the seventh year, in 2002, the year we 
balance our budget, it grows to $36.4 billion. That is a $12 billion 
increase, $12 billion on top of the $24 billion spent last year, a 50-
percent increase in the student loan program We are still allowing 
students to borrow up to $49,000. The average loan will still be 
$17,000.
  What did we originally attempt to do? When a student graduates, they 
are given a grace period of 6 months before they have to start paying 
back the loan. The Federal Government, the taxpayers, men and women who 
work who pay money into this general fund of the Federal Government, 
were paying and are paying the interest from

[[Page H2112]]

graduation to that first 6 months. Our proposal was that you simply 
take that period of 6 months and you say that student pays the 
interest, and we amortize it during the 10 years that the student is 
allowed to pay back the loan. In some cases they are given more than 10 
years, but 10 years tends to be the average.

                              {time}  2215

  So we are saying that a student will have to pay the interest from 
graduation to the first 6 months, and no longer it will be the 
taxpayers. Believe it or not, we save in the 7 years about $4 billion 
doing that, close to it.
  Now, what did it amount to in terms of the student costs? Because we 
amortized it during that 10-year period, it amounts to about $9 more 
for the average $17,000 loan. Nine dollars more is the cost of a pizza. 
It is also the cost of a move and the most inexpensive soda.
  I have no trouble whatsoever telling the student who has borrowed 
money from the Federal Government at lower interest rates that they are 
going to pay $9 more a month in order to save $4 billion for the 
taxpayers of this country.
  So we are increasing the student loan 50 percent, not cutting it; 
increasing it.
  The Medicaid program, which is health care for the poor and nursing 
care for the elderly poor, it is growing under our plan this last year 
$89 billion to $127 billion. Only in Washington when you go from $89 
billion to $127 billion do people call it a cut. It is not a cut. It is 
a significant, almost a gigantic increase in spending funded by the 
taxpayers.
  Medicare is going to grow from $178 billion, which it was this last 
year, to $289 billion, over $100 billion more spent in the seventh year 
than spent today. We will be spending 60 percent more in the course of 
the seventh year to what it was last year, and people say, well, that 
is 60 percent more. But you have all of these elderly people who are 
growing into the system. It is accurate we do have more elderly, but on 
a per elderly, it is going to grow 49 percent, going to grow from 
$4,800 to $7,100 per beneficiary.
  What we are doing with Medicare? We are going to save $270 billion, 
that number, by the Congressional Budget Office, was moved to $240 
billion. The President called it a cut. We viewed it as a savings, 
particularly since we knew we were going to spend more each and every 
year. I mean $4,800 per beneficiary. Per senior, the $7,100 is a 
significant increase, not a cut, a significant increase, a 50 percent 
of 49 percent increase per beneficiary in the seventh year. But 
referred to as a cut.
  I was trying to wrestle with this idea how the President and others 
and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle could call it a cut, 
and it would be like if my daughter was able, if we were able to afford 
it, we told our daughter that she could buy a new automobile, she could 
buy a Taurus automobile for $20,000 retail price and the dealership A 
sold it for $20,000 and dealership B sold it for $17,000 for the same 
automobile instead of 20.
  I would hardly tell her that the $20,000 we gave her to spend that 
she was foolish and irresponsible because she saved $3,000 buying the 
same automobile. Now like in the argument that she could buy this 
automobile for $20,000 in one dealer and buy a better automobile, one 
that had a sunroof and had a few extra points, a better engine, other 
features to it, and if she bought it for 17, I would hardly say that 
she cut the program, that she was foolishly saving but not saving, 
cutting, when she was doing what I would hope any rational person would 
do, get a better program and spend less to do it.
  Now, how could we possibly say that by saving $270 billion we are or 
$240 billion later, scored by the Congressional Budget Office, we are 
getting a better program? That on the face of it seemed like it looked 
too good to be true.
  I think most seniors could answer why it is true. There is not a 
senior, not a senior who cannot describe the extraordinary fraud in 
some cases, and the outrageous abuses we see in this program. It is a 
great program, but it is a very, very wasteful program. We look to save 
money. We save $240 billion in Medicare by not increasing the 
copayments on seniors. Maybe we should have, but we did not. Not 
increasing the deductible, maybe we should have. We did not. Not 
increasing the premium on seniors, we kept it at 31.5 percent. Now, 
31.5 percent of the premium, that is on Medicare part B, is going to 
cost more each year because 31.5 percent, as health care costs go up, 
that premium will cost more the taxpayer, though, is still going to pay 
68.5 percent. That tax revenue is coming out of general funds. We have 
Medicare part A, which is the hospital program, and we have Medicare 
Part B, the health care services, all the equipment, all the doctors 
costs, all the other costs associated with serving health care, non-
hospital costs.
  Now, what we learned last year and actually in the years before, we 
were being told, not listening, this Congress is the first Congress 
that said we are going to do something about it, we learned that 
Medicare was going to go bankrupt, insolvent, starting this year, 
according to the trustees, five of whom are the President's appointees, 
and we learned that, in fact, this was going to happen.

  So what we looked to do is to save money in the Medicare part A trust 
fund and save money in the Medicare part B trust fund. We looked to do 
that so the program would not go bankrupt. What we then found out is 
last year, instead of $4 billion more going into the fund than going 
out, in Medicare part A, did not happen. In fact, $36 million more went 
out than went in; $36 million in this program is not gigantic, but we 
were supposed to have $4 billion more coming into the program, which 
did not. I mean that sets off alarm bells to any rational person. That 
says, my gosh, this fund is going insolvent 1 year sooner than we were 
told and by $4 billion more than we expected that it would happen.
  What did we do then? We did not increase the copayment. We did not 
increase the deductible. We did not increase the premium. We left it at 
31.5 percent. What did we do? We said the wealthier, if you made more 
than $125,000, would have to pay all of Medicare part B, not just 31.5 
percent, all of it. It is still the best deal in the world for seniors. 
But if you make $125,000, that is not well known, Republicans do not 
like the wealthy to know we want them to pay more, I guess it is not 
the Republican thing. I am hard-pressed to know why Democrats clearly 
do not want people to know Republicans are asking the wealthier to pay 
more, because Democrats like to tell people the Republicans just want 
to help the wealthy and hurt the poor. That is simply not true. But 
that is what they like to say. So Democrats are not sharing that the 
wealthier are paying more and Republicans are not making that point 
either.
  The fact is if you make over $125,000 of taxable income, you will pay 
all of Medicare part B. That gives us $9 billion more of our $244 
billion savings. Where do we find the biggest savings? The biggest 
savings is not we slow the growth of payments to doctors and hospitals, 
which we do, not as much as the President, but we do, the biggest 
savings is that we allow seniors for the first time to have choice in 
Medicare.
  Why would that save money? Because the Federal Government does such a 
pathetic job of controlling the growth of these programs that there is 
just simply a lot of opportunity to save. Now, we are allowing private 
sector, the private sector to get involved. When the private sector 
gets involved, they cannot say you are going to get less than you are 
going to under Medicare part B, they cannot say that because they are 
not allowed to have that happen. They have to provide the same level of 
service or better.
  The fact remains, if they cannot offer anything less and charge less, 
they have to attract seniors. The way they attract seniors is they say 
we will give you eye care, dental care, we will give you prescription 
care, costs of helping pay prescription drugs. They will also in some 
cases say we will rebate the copay or deductible, maybe we will pay the 
Medigap. That is the difference between what Medicare pays and what the 
beneficiary has to pay. Quite often they want to shield themselves from 
any costs, so they simply buy a Medigap program.
  There will be some private sector groups that will come in and do all 
of the above or part of the above, but they will make it less expensive 
than it is for a senior today.
  Now, seniors can stay in the old system. They can stay in the fee-
for-service. They can get Medicare just as they

[[Page H2113]]

have gotten it. They do not have to leave. If they leave and they do 
not like the program, they do not like the program, what they do, they 
leave, they have the opportunity to go right back into the private care 
model. They have the opportunity to go right back every 30 days for the 
next 24 months.
  A senior who moves into private care who does not like it, maybe does 
not like the doctors, does not like the program, does not feel they are 
getting the kind of care they want, does not think the Medigap coverage 
or the dental care, prescription care, warrants their leaving their 
fee-for-service, they can go right back into the traditional fee-for-
service system.
  It is amazing, but the plan saves an extraordinary amount of money 
because the private sector simply is going to police the system better 
than the Government sector does.
  Now, I chair the Medicare task force and Medicaid task force for the 
Committee on the Budget. I am also chairing the Human Resource 
Committee that oversees the Department of HHS. We oversee HUD, Labor, 
Education, and Veterans Affairs, but we also oversee HHS, Health and 
Human Services. That means we oversee FDA, HCFA, which is the Health 
Care Administration, that basically handles Medicare programs. We 
oversee the Centers for Disease Control. We have looked into the 
Medicaid program, the Medicare program. It is astounding to know that 
we have contracted out to private carriers simply to police the system, 
but we do not give them any incentives to do it right.
  Basically, the carriers do not have the bottom line kind of ability 
in a bill that is presented on Medicare, if a doctor takes care of 
someone's broken or sprained ankle, and they do a chest x-ray, which is 
clearly not related to the sprained ankle, they can submit the bill and 
know it is likely it will be paid, even though it should not be paid, 
because HCFA does not require any more than 5 percent of the bills to 
be checked and only less than 1 percent, less than 1 percent of all the 
dollar amounts of bills to be checked.
  So what has the GAO told us, the Government Accounting Office, what 
have the inspectors general told us? They said, if there was a basic 
auto-adjudicated system, with software to kick out these inappropriate 
bills, the Federal Government would save about a half a billion 
dollars.
  Well, that is your government at work. The Government, your 
government at work chooses not to save a half a billion dollars. The 
Government has set up a Byzantine system of changing the purchase of 
health care products. We know that the Veterans' Administration is able 
to buy a particular product that Medicare pays, and for the last 4 
years has paid $4 billion more than the Veterans' Administration pays 
for that same product. In other words, if we paid the same price for 
what the Veterans' Administration pays for that particular product, the 
Federal Government, the taxpayers, would have saved over $4 billion.
  I can go on. I mean, why is it that men under Medicaid are sometimes, 
and Medicare, Medicare particularly, why would they have been charged 
for giving birth. It is humanly impossible, but it happens. And we go 
on and on.
  I mean I had in one of my community meetings, I always have people 
come up and tell me the outrageous bills that they get. One of them was 
a nurse, and she said she knew health care services, she knew that this 
bill was incorrect. She had looked at it, knew it was incorrect, and 
went to the hospital. The hospital said, well, we are not properly paid 
by Medicare, so we have to find other bills in order to get what we 
think we are properly due.

  It is why doctors sometimes go into nursing homes, poke their head in 
a window, Emily, how are you doing, John, how are you doing? They see 
15 people in 15 minutes, and they are able to make out like bandits. I 
mean I can go on and on.
  One of the ways we save in our Medicare plan is that we make health 
care a Federal offense, finally we prevent people from going State to 
State. We are going to save billions of dollars by finally getting 
tough, finally in a Federal way against abuse in Medicare.
  Now, there is lots I could deal with and talk about as I yield the 
floor. I do not want to just make mention of a few more issues. I know 
this looks like a food fight to a lot of people. Republicans and 
Democrats on the floor yell at each other. I am not proud of that. We 
look like Little League deciding who is safe at second. In fact, we 
probably are doing a disservice to Little League to say we look like 
Little League. They might take issue at that. We are pretty childish at 
times.
  I guess my point to this Chamber, to put it on the record, is that 
this is not a food fight. It is an epic battle about what kind of 
country we are going to become. I look and think of what we have done, 
allowing the Federal debt since the Vietnam War to go from $430 billion 
to now $4,900 billion. In 22 years, in 22 years, we have allowed the 
Federal debt to increase ten-fold. That is during the time of peace. It 
is not during a time of war when you just spend whatever you have to 
spend and then you pray that you will succeed in your battle against, 
in this case, Hitler's Germany. We just spent what we had to and we 
ended up with a sizable debt.
  But since the Vietnam war we have allowed the debt to increase ten-
fold, ten-fold in 22 years. I think of what I like to think of myself, 
as a historian, I certainly would appreciate it, that was my college 
degree in American history. I think of how historians graded the 
Congress after the death of Lincoln, the Reconstruction Congresses.

                              {time}  2230

  It is not a proud time in our history, the time after the Civil War. 
I think that historians will look at the Congresses over the last 22 
years, and even the White House of both parties, and say this was not 
our proudest moment. I think I am being kind. I think they will say it 
was one of the darkest times in our history, when we have literally 
been willing to mortgage our children's future for present-day 
expenses.
  I do not think that when historians will look at what we have done in 
Congress, in the White House, and, candidly, I think historians will be 
not complementary even of the American people, because the American 
people, as much as they may feel they are not part of this process, 
they are very much a part of it.
  I would have liked to have shut down the Government after 
Thanksgiving break and not open it up. I was on the losing side in my 
own conference. I think it was a mistake to open the Government until 
we balanced the budget. I regret dearly that we did.
  I think it is a mistake to vote out increasing the national debt 
until we come to grips with the balancing the budget. I prayed that 
Congresses of earlier years and the White House of earlier years would 
have, at least one of them, would say no more, we are not going to 
allow these deficits to continue. We are not going to mortgage our 
children's future. We care to leave this country better than we found 
it. If only 10 years ago a Congress or White House, one of them had 
said no more, we are not going to allow this to continue.

  So I say well, you know, it did not happen. We are not going to shut 
down the Government I do not suspect. We crossed that line, and I guess 
we will just continue working day by day until the White House and 
Congress come to grips. We need to have an agreement, but it cannot be 
a superficial one. It has got to be a substantive agreement.
  How did I start this special order? I started this special order by 
pointing out that 50 percent of our budget are entitlements. Fifty 
percent of our budget. We do not vote on them, they are on automatic 
pilot. Only one-third of the budget is what we vote on, the 13 
different budget items.
  Congress has the upper hand in the negotiations with the President on 
appropriations. He vetoes a budget, the Government shuts down. That is 
not good necessarily for us or the President, but it calls the 
question. And it is certainly not something Federal employees wanted. 
They are caught in the middle.
  But it is much bigger than Federal employees. It is whether we are 
going to finally come to grips with the budget. When the President 
vetoes entitlements like he did, when he vetoed our balanced budget 
bill, when we wanted to reform Medicare and Medicaid and welfare, what 
did we end up with? Not nothing. We ended up with what exists, the 
automatic pilot, what is existing law.
  So for Congress to simply cave in and allow the President to allow 
and force

[[Page H2114]]

us to spend more on appropriations without a corresponding change in 
entitlements would be very foolish and irresponsible, in my judgment.
  I learned a great term when I was in graduate school when I was 
getting my MBA and MPA and majoring in economics, a concept I wish I 
had learned earlier. It is called opportunity costs. If you spend money 
here, you give up the money to spend it here. If you spend money here, 
you give up the opportunity to spend it here. If you spend some money 
here, you can maybe spend some money here. But you give up 
opportunities, depending on how much you spend.
  Our entitlements are growing at 10, 11, 12 percent. If we do not get 
a handle on the growth of Medicare and Medicaid, if we cannot slow 
Medicare and Medicaid to about 7 percent a year, and prevent them from 
growing at 9, 10, 11 percent, if they go up at 9, 10, 11 percent, then 
the appropriations part of our budget is going to be continuing to be 
squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. Our need to help our young children 
dealing with teenage pregnancies, a whole host of things I think are 
necessary, are simply not going to be able to be funded, if we just 
allow entitlements to grow and grow and grow.
  I know a number of good Members in both the House and Senate are 
quitting. They say this is not a fun place anymore. I am hard pressed. 
I have been here 7 years and I love this job, and I have never felt I 
have been critical of serving in Washington. I love Washington. I love 
this opportunity. I mean, this Congress was formed by our Founding 
Fathers in the Constitution of the United States. I mean, I look at 
this flag with great reverence. I look at the Constitution with great 
reverence, and I look at what the Constitution did. It established a 
Congress, it established a Senate, it established a White House, 
and they knew there would be times we have disagreements.

  Our Founding Fathers knew that sometimes it might even look like 
kids, but they knew that ultimately we would have a system to resolve 
our differences.
  So I just ask the American people to see beyond just this debate that 
seems to not be as substantive as they want, and look for the fact that 
this truly is an epic battle. I would encourage some of my colleagues 
who are quitting and not running again because they say this is not a 
fun place to level with the American people and acknowledge this really 
has never been a fun place. It has been an important place, but not a 
fun place.
  Candidly, I am not so sure it matters whether it is a fun place 
anymore. I am not even certain that the issue of whether we are always 
civil to each other is an overriding issue. It is not pretty to look 
at, and I regret it and like to think I am not a part of that kind of 
dialog. But when I see some of the people I have admired over the years 
quitting, and I admit I do not walk in their shoes, their moccasins, I 
do not know what their life experiences are, but it seems to me on the 
outside looking in on what they are doing, that they really were part 
of a Congress over the years that allowed us to get in the mess we are 
in.
  We are in this mess, and it is very serious, and it requires a lot of 
heavy lifting. We have got to confront the seniors, we have got to 
confront the young, we have got to confront the rich and poor, and we 
have got to come to solutions to our problems.
  It is a very contentious time. My take on their leaving, not to be 
unkind, is that simply that now that the difficulties are here, now 
that we are clawing to get out of the deep hole we find ourselves in, 
they are quitting. They are quitting when it is tough. They helped get 
us in this mess, and, frankly, I think they should stay to help get us 
out of this mess.
  When I hear a colleague say, ``Well, now that I am not running again, 
I can really be honest with the American people,'' I am thinking to 
myself, why were you not honest when you were running? Tell the 
American people the truth. They are going to have you do the right 
thing. Tell the American people things that just simply do not add up, 
and they are going to give you confused messages. So I think it is a 
shame they just did not tell them the truth while they were candidates. 
If they told the American people the truth, I do not think we would be 
in the mess we are in today.
  Mr. Speaker, with that, I have a sense you were not sure that this 
was going to be as long a time as it has turned out to be, and I notice 
a colleague on the other side of the aisle, so you will probably be 
here a little longer than you wanted, but I thank you for giving me 
this opportunity.

                          ____________________