[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 64 (Thursday, May 9, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H4791-H4793]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Taylor of North Carolina). The Chair 
would remind all Members that remarks in debate may not include 
personal references to Members of the Senate.

                              {time}  2300

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, does that mean I cannot mention 
Speaker Gingrich?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Taylor of North Carolina). Members of 
the Senate.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I apologize for that.
  At the time about 30 years ago, then Congressman Dole said that 
Congress----
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Does the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. 
Pallone] yield for a parliamentary inquiry?
  Mr. PALLONE. I do not, Mr. Speaker. We are just doing special orders. 
There is no parliamentary inquiry.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I would say compliments to Mr. Pallone on his 
leadership, not just last year but it seems that we are having the same 
debate this year. Last year the voters said no to the Gingrich plan of 
Medicare cuts and Medicaid cuts and draconian student loan cuts in 
order to give a tax break to the wealthy.
  This year it is the same old song. It is coming back saying let us do 
it again. Last year, Speaker Gingrich shut the Government down in order 
to try to get his Medicaid cuts and Medicare cuts and student loan cuts 
and weakening environmental laws in order to give tax breaks to the 
rich. He shut down the Government trying to get his way, and clearly 
the voters and the people of this country said that is not the way it 
ought to be. He gave up and now he is trying it again.
  I cannot believe that we are going to have to go through this same 
debate. I hope that Speaker Gingrich is not going to go so far this 
year that he threatens a Government shutdown to make Medicare wither on 
the vine and in order to get Medicare and Medicaid

[[Page H4792]]

and student loan cuts, because clearly the country does not want to see 
this health care program--30 years ago, 50 percent of the elderly in 
this country had no health insurance. Today, only 1 or 2 percent have 
no health insurance. It has been a success.
  We have to get costs under control, but we do not let the program 
wither on the vine. And on student loan cuts, it makes no sense because 
we as a nation have to compete globally. We cannot see middle-class 
students charged $5,000 per student more for a 4-year college education 
in order for Speaker Gingrich to take that money from the cuts in 
student loans and giving it to tax breaks for the rich. It is not to 
balance the budget, but to give tax breaks to the wealthiest people in 
the country.
  Mr. Pallone, I applaud your work in opposing this budget rerun as we 
had a year ago that ended up in a Government shutdown trying to get tax 
breaks for the richest Americans and gutting the programs that matter 
to our parents and grandparents and to students.
  Mr. PALLONE. I thank the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown] for joining 
in this debate tonight. If I could just inquire, because of the way the 
time was split, we have approximately 15 minutes left?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Yes.
  Mr. PALLONE. OK. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to, if I could, 
comment on a couple of things that the gentleman from Ohio said, 
because I think they are really crucial. One is this concern that you 
have, which is extremely legitimate, over the fact that the number of 
uninsured, the number of people that have no insurance in this country 
continues to rise.
  We know that that was one of the major reasons why President Clinton 
sought to address the health care crisis, if you will, in the last 
Congress because the number of people that have no health insurance in 
this country, and we are talking about all kinds of people, primarily 
working people, continues to go up.
  One of the impacts, if you will, of cuts in Medicaid, is that the 
number of uninsured will go up even more so because Medicaid 
traditionally, and really progressively over the last 20 years, has 
been expanded to cover more and more people. One of the major concerns 
that I have about this Republican proposal that was unveiled today is 
that by discouraging the States essentially from matching, actually, I 
think not even allowing them or not expecting them, I should say to 
match the Federal Medicaid dollars to a 50-50 basis, what you do is 
actually have the amount of money that is spent on Medicaid decreased 
significantly, Federal and State dollars.
  That is going to mean that a lot of children and elderly who are now 
insured and covered by Medicaid will not be covered anymore, and 
therefore will increase the ranks of the uninsured. I yield again to 
the gentleman.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Medicaid cuts across a broad section of people. It 
is poor children. It is also the elderly in nursing homes and it is 
also hospitals similar to the one I visited in Cleveland some months 
ago called Health Hill Hospital. It is a hospital where young people 
typically from under 18, not young children, who have been in a car 
accident or had some major traumatic injury, often head injuries, and 
their medical bills are $5,000 or $10,000 a month. They are often from 
middle-class families, but no middle-class family can pay that kind of 
medical cost, nor does their insurance very often cover that for more 
than a few months or a year or so.

  It is things like that that can happen to all kinds of middle-class 
families and those major cuts in the Medicare for the elderly and 
Medicaid for so many others are so troublesome. But it is not just the 
dollars with Medicaid, it is also from the Gingrich plan last year in 
Medicaid. It took away the standards for nursing homes that President 
Reagan and the Congress in the mid-1980s enacted in response to 
oversedation of nursing home patients, in response to problems of 
safety in nursing homes where some older people were either, as I said, 
oversedated or restrained in their beds, and it took away these 
standards that both parties agreed to in the 1980s. And that is what is 
so troublesome.
  There is consensus that Medicare and Medicaid makes sense for almost 
all of the American people. Almost all of us agree to that, both 
parties in the 1980's and both parties in the 1970's and both parties 
in the 1960's when they were created. Yet today this extreme Gingrich 
faction that is running this Congress says we want to not only cut 
these programs and let them wither on the vine; we want to take away 
the safety standards in nursing homes that mean so much to older people 
to make their lives a little better in the last 1 or 2 or 5 or 10 years 
of their lives and to take away the protection that people that your 
age, Mr. Pallone, and my age have if our parents are in nursing homes 
that we will not go bankrupt in order to keep them in a nursing home to 
do that, or that we will not have to choose between do I put my mom and 
dad in a nursing home or do I pay for a children's education? 
Particularly with the student loan cuts.
  To put Americans in that position where 40 or 50-year-old adults have 
to make choices between their parents or their children or where the 
protection is taken away, if in 20 years or so or 30 or 40 years I have 
to put my wife, or I would have to go in a nursing home, would my wife 
not even be able to live in the house that we live in at present? That 
sort of situation simply does not make sense.
  Surely, again, we have to get these costs under control, but we do 
not let these programs wither on the vine and we do not take away this 
health care system that has worked for so many people in this country 
and today their lives are better. People that paid their taxes and 
raised their children and played by the rules and signed a covenant, 
they expect after paying into Medicare all of these years that they 
will have that health program for themselves and their family.
  Yet Speaker Gingrich want its to wither on the vine and not see that 
program anymore. I do not think it makes any sense. I do not understand 
why they want to rerun this debate that clearly the American people 
rejected in 1995 and are going to reject this year as long as people 
know about it and they cannot sneak it in the back-door.
  Mr. PALLONE. Exactly. I just wanted to point to two surveys that were 
done, one involving the Medicaid safety net for children and the other 
for nursing homes. And just very quickly this is from an article that 
was in the Washington Post last November that says, ``Medicaid safety 
net for children could be imperiled.'' It was a report by the Journal 
of the American Medical Assocation. It said, ``From 1992 to 1993, an 
estimated 3 million children lost private health insurance as people 
lost jobs or employers stopped providing health insurance.''
  But until now, increases in Medicaid coverage resulting from past 
legislation, congressional legislation, that broadened eligibility 
under Medicaid basically offset the fact that a lot of people lost 
their jobs and their children are no longer covered by health 
insurance. For example, they said that in 1988, 66 percent of all 
children under age 18 had health insurance based on the employment of a 
family member and 16 percent were covered by Medicaid, but in 1994, the 
share with employer base health insurance had propped to 59 percent and 
the Medicaid to 26 percent. So even though people were losing health 
care coverage for their children because they were losing their jobs in 
the last five or 6 years, because of the expansion of Medicaid coverage 
for children under Federal guaranteed entitlement status. Most of those 
children continued to be covered by health insurance under Medicaid, 
but now if we block grant this to the States that will not be the case 
anymore.

  Another study, this is from the New York Times back in November 1995, 
that pointed out how the Republican budget would create a shortage of 
nursing home beds for the elderly, and it says an array of advocates 
are warning that the Republican budget would put extraordinary strains 
on the Nation's patchwork system for paying for nursing homes. The 
chief threat comes from the Republican cuts to Medicaid. Critics say 
the changes proposed by the Republicans could diminish the availability 
of nursing home beds for all but the richest Americans, as well as its 
quality of care within those institutions and the amount of assistance 
available for care at the nursing home

[[Page H4793]]

and would come apart when the over 85 population is projected to grow 
by 40 percent.
  Again, the same way the number of children who did not have private 
health insurance was growing, the number of seniors who need nursing 
home beds is growing, and here we are at the time when these 
populations and needs are growing and those people would become 
uninsured and not have coverage. We are talking about block granting 
and providing less money to the States for the very coverage where 
there is more need. What you are pointing out is exactly on point.
  The other thing that I wanted to mention that you talked about is 
this whole notion that somehow the Republicans, Gingrich and the 
others, are saying what we are really doing here is protecting Medicare 
because it is going to go insolvent and so we have to implement these 
cuts in order to make Medicare solvent 5 or 6 years from now.
  Again, I would say nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, 
these cuts are not being implemented in order to protect Medicare. 
These cuts are being implemented to give the tax breaks for the 
wealthy. And the President in his budget resolution, in his budget that 
he proposed earlier this year, guarantees the life of the Medicare 
Trust Fund for at least a decade. His budget proves that the Republican 
Medicare cuts, the damaging changes that we have talked about, are not 
necessary to balance the budget. There is over $120 billion remaining 
in the trust fund and there is no imminent danger that claims will not 
be paid. And although the trust fund did not perform as well as 
projected in 1995, the difference between the actual and projected 
performance was within the typical margin of error and has been 
incorporated into budget projections.
  Every year minor adjustments were made to make sure that the trust 
fund would remain solvent for the next decade. Democrats continued to 
do that. The President did that back in 1993. His health care reform 
would have expanded the life of the trust fund significantly. This is 
just an excuse, and I know you mentioned that. And I would not be 
surprised if our colleagues on the other side are going to suggest this 
again later tonight, that somehow Gingrich and they are protecting the 
trust fund from insolvency. It is not true.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. It is so important that Americans not be fooled by 
Gingrich saying that we just want to protect Medicare by the next round 
of speakers trotting out their articles from conservative, generally 
pro-Republican newspapers, saying they just want to protect, whether it 
is the Washington Post or the Washington Times, that typically support 
the Republican agenda, the Wall Street Journal, to say that we are just 
trying to save Medicare. The Medicare cuts are for tax breaks for the 
wealthy, as have you said over and over, Mr. Pallone, and as the voters 
clearly, and the public clearly understands from last year, 
when Gingrich tried to do this before.

  And it is clear that the Gingrich crowd here, the far right of the 
Republican Party that has supported all of this and pushed all of this, 
they have never believed in Medicare. They voted against it 30 years 
ago. Last fall the presumptive nominee of Speaker Gingrich's party has 
said, ``I was fighting the fight 30 years ago because we knew Medicare 
would not work.'' Speaker Gingrich last fall himself said, ``We just 
want it to wither on the vine. We cannot politically afford to get rid 
of it in round one, because the public will not stand for it.''
  They have never cared about Medicare. They voted against Medicare for 
30 years, most not the middle of the Republican Party. But because that 
was the consensus, that Democrats and Republicans alike realized that 
the public supports Medicare, because that far right of the Republican 
Party that Speaker Gingrich is so close to and that really runs things, 
and particularly the freshmen, all of them have clearly shown their 
opposition to Medicare year after year after year after year and that 
part of the party clearly does not support it.
  They still do not support it. They will trot out newspaper articles 
showing how responsible they are, but it is obviously tax breaks for 
the rich and watch Medicare wither on the vine. That is what they are 
about. That is what they want to do.
  They have a Washington Post article they will use, a newspaper that 
supported the Gingrich agenda time after time. It has a reputation of 
once being a more moderate paper with an editorial board made up of 
people that are conservative and do not support these programs, but 
representing the far right of that party.
  Speaker Gingrich's comments about Medicare that he wants to see it 
``wither on the vine'' and ``it is tax breaks for the rich'' tell the 
whole story. They are simply not interested in saving this program but 
in gutting this program and in seeing it wither away.
  Mr. PALLONE. I agree. I know our time is almost over here, but again 
if it were really true that they were concerned about the Medicare 
program, they would deal with it separately from the budget. They would 
not use the cuts in Medicare and Medicaid as a reason, if you will, or 
as the basis for these tax breaks that are provided in this new budget 
that they are trotting out. And even more important, they would not 
make the changes, the substantive changes in the Medicare program and 
the Medicaid program that we talked about this evening.
  What they are doing is trying to push seniors into managed care, to 
deny them the choice of their doctors or their hospitals. They are 
including these balanced billed provisions that will force seniors to 
pay more out of pocket for the health care. All of these major 
structural changes in Medicare are being implemented and those are 
being done under the aegis or with the excuse that somehow they are 
trying to preserve Medicare as we continue, and it is just the 
opposite.

                              {time}  2315

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. The medical savings accounts that the Speaker has 
extolled, the virtues, over and over and over again, as an idea of a 
big insurance company, major contributors to the Speaker that salivate 
over the prospect of getting to write all this insurance for a Medicare 
program that is withering on the vine. It means major income to them, 
major costs to senior citizens to pay for a tax break for the wealthy.
  Mr. PALLONE. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has clearly 
indicated that medical savings accounts will actually cost more money 
to the Federal Government. So if you are talking about trying to save 
money, that clearly is not the way to go.
  I want to thank the gentleman again for being here tonight.

                          ____________________