[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 81 (Wednesday, June 5, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H5824]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            THE STRAIGHT FACE TEST ON MEDICARE AND MEDICAID

  (Mrs. SCHROEDER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, the words are flying again on Medicare 
and Medicaid. Here we go. It must be an election year. What do you 
think?
  Look, the American people are pretty smart about this issue. When the 
leadership on the other side, one of them said he was proud he never 
voted for it, another one said he hoped it would wither on the vine, 
another leader on that side said that they were trying to make cuts 
like no one had ever seen before, but now all of a sudden, as we get 
near to the election year, everybody is trying to rewrite history and 
suddenly say, no, we have come to save it, come to save it, somehow 
that does not pass the straight face test.
  Last year we had an attempt to try and put Medicare on the right path 
so that the report that we are going to be getting would not be coming, 
had we done that. Yet the other side rejected it because they did not 
want to do that. They wanted to cut Medicare and put it into tax cuts 
for the people who need tax cuts the least, the ones who have the most 
get more. I do not understand that. I do not understand that at all.

  So we are at a point of do we mend it or do we mash it. The mashers 
are trying to say they want to mend. We want so say, it is time to deal 
with it straightforwardly.

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