[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 86 (Wednesday, June 12, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6164-S6166]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    THE MISGUIDED REPUBLICAN BUDGET

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, tomorrow we are going to be asked to 
consider a repackaged version of last year's misguided Republican 
budget. It has not improved with age. This budget plan, like last 
year's, undermines basic protections for children and the elderly, 
raises taxes on the working poor, and denies educational opportunity to 
millions of Americans, all to pay for the lavish tax breaks for the 
wealthy. If this budget plan becomes law, Medicare would be cut by $167 
billion over 6 years, Medicaid would be cut by $72 billion at the 
Federal level and some $250 billion in the States by the year 2002, 
with the change in the formulas which have been developed in this 
proposal.
  Education will be cut $25 billion. Yesterday, I addressed the Senate 
on this issue, pointing out what a mistake this really is, when we find 
out that the number of children who are going to be going to the high 
schools in this country is going to increase by 8 percent. We are going 
to go up to about 53 or 54 million children in the next 2 years. The 
number of traditional college-age students will increase by 12 percent. 
As a result, even a current services budget is failing to adjust to 
those particular

[[Page S6165]]

new realities and the funding that is included in this budget fails by 
about $20 billion to even come close to it. This is in contrast to the 
President's program that continues our ongoing commitment in the field 
of education.
  Under this Republican budget, the earned-income tax credit will be 
cut $18 billion. That is the tax credit which is available to working 
families, phased out at approximately $28,000 to $30,000, and 
principally available to working families with children. All of these 
cuts would be made in order to bestow a lavish windfall of $122 billion 
to $180 billion, as Mr. Kasich has pointed out in the House of 
Representatives, for tax breaks for the wealthiest individuals in the 
Nation.

  Mr. President, 42 percent of the mandatory cuts in this misguided 
budget come from programs that help the neediest families and 
individuals in the Nation; 47 percent of the tax breaks will go to 
those making over $100,000 a year. Meanwhile, corporate special 
interests are not asked to ante up a single nickel. The corporate 
welfare part of our budget, which is expenditures which otherwise could 
be used for deficit reduction, will be over $4 trillion over the period 
of the next 7 years--$4 trillion. Yet there is not $1 of savings from 
tax expenditures in the Republican budget. There is not one expenditure 
that is out there in the Federal Tax Code that is being eliminated by 
the Republican budget program.
  We hear so often about how we have too many programs, programs that 
do not work, and many of us have been trying to address that issue. We 
had a good program to try to deal with the proliferation of job 
training programs under an excellent bipartisan bill that Senator 
Kassebaum and I worked on. It passed the Senate overwhelmingly in this 
Congress. We still have hopes about that program. We have been 
consolidating health programs and consolidating education programs in 
the period of recent years. But we cannot find, in the Republican 
budget, 1 nickel to save from some inefficient tax expenditures that 
may be enticing American corporations to go overseas and take American 
jobs with them--not one.
  The President's program has $40 billion in savings. It seems to me we 
ought to be able to go up even significantly above that proposal. But 
there is not one--not one--in the Republican program.

  Medicare cuts are a prime example of the Republican priorities. They 
are no less devastating simply because they sound familiar. The 
Medicare cuts have not improved with age. Last year the Republican plan 
was a thinly veiled attack on the entire concept of Medicare. It was 
designed to cause Medicare to ``wither on the vine,'' in the words of 
Speaker Gingrich, by forcing senior citizens to give up their family 
doctor and join the private insurance programs.
  When Republicans took up the issues of Medicare cuts last year, they 
proposed to cut the program by $270 billion--three times more than the 
amount the Medicare trustees said was needed to protect the solvency of 
the trust fund.
  You cannot listen to a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate without 
our good Republican friends saying we have to pass this in order to 
deal with the potential bankruptcy of the trust fund. The fact is, they 
are cutting the Medicare Program three times the amount that the 
trustees say is necessary in order to protect the solvency of the trust 
funds.
  This year, the Republicans are proposing to cut $167 billion from 
Medicare. By contrast, the President's plan cuts it $116 billion, 44 
percent less. Yet it guarantees the Medicare solvency for a decade and 
funds Medicare at the level necessary to assure that quality care will 
be available for senior citizens when they need it.
  Even worse, Republicans support an inflexible ceiling on Medicare 
spending. Consequently, if inflation is higher or medical needs are 
greater than anticipated, Medicare spending will not go up as it 
should, and many senior citizens will be out of luck and out of care.
  The President's plan has the right savings and right priorities. It 
provides ample time for Congress and the administration to work 
together to find the longer run solutions we need to deal honestly with 
Medicare's problems and preserve the quality of health care for the 
elderly.
  In fact, we can take many steps to reduce Medicare costs without 
cutting the quality of benefits, without raising premiums, but these 
steps are not what the Republicans are proposing.
  Another false Republican argument in defense of their Medicare cuts 
is that the reductions are not really cuts, because the total amount of 
Medicare spending will continue to grow. That argument was addressed, I 
thought, very effectively by the ranking minority member of the Budget 
Committee, Senator Exon, last evening.
  But every household in America knows that if the cost of your rent 
and the cost of your utilities and the cost of food go up and your 
income stays the same or goes up less rapidly, you have taken a real 
cut in your living standard, and that is what is at issue.
  In my own State of Massachusetts, the number of frail elderly, those 
who are 85 years old, is going to double in the period of the next 5 
years, let alone the total number of elderly that is going to grow. 
This is a real national phenomenon, a demographic phenomenon. We are 
blessed to have our parents with longer and extended lives, and to try 
and play shell games, in terms of the quality of care for our seniors, 
I think, is particularly unacceptable when we are balancing that with 
tax breaks for wealthy individuals.
  Republicans speak of a cut in defense, when defense spending does not 
increase by enough to offset rising costs. Apparently, the same 
Republican logic does not apply to spending on Medicare that applies to 
spending on guns, tanks and other weapons. A cut is a cut is a cut, 
whether it is in Medicare, Social Security, or national defense.
  Even more damaging than the loss of billions of dollars that 
Republicans would slash from Medicare is their attempt to turn it over 
to the private insurance industry. The Republican budget contains a 
number of changes to force senior citizens to give up their own doctors 
and join private insurance plans.
  Once they are forced into these plans, senior citizens will be 
stripped of many of the protections they enjoy today--protections 
against overcharges by doctors and other health providers, what we call 
double billing. The doctors, rather than taking what is allocated to 
them under the Medicare Program, say, ``Pay in full.''
  Under current law, the seniors are protected from paying additional 
kinds of costs, but there is no such requirement if they go into 
private health insurance. They could be billed once and then be charged 
again. That is a problem that is readily understood. We thought we 
addressed that in amendments that I and others had offered earlier on 
the budget resolution, but those protections were discarded in the 
conference.
  There were protections against premium gouging and profiteering by 
insurance companies, protection of their right to keep their own family 
doctor and go to the specialist of their choice.
  Republicans claim they want to offer senior citizens a choice, but 
this is a choice no senior citizen should be forced to make.
  I offered a sense-of-the-Congress resolution that was adopted by the 
full Senate stating that reconciliation should not include proposals to 
eliminate these protections. It specifically reaffirmed that private 
insurance plans should be prohibited from leveling premium surcharges 
for basic Medicare services, and the doctors should not be allowed to 
strap on extra charges to seniors participating in such plans. That 
proposal was dropped by the Republicans in the House-Senate conference. 
The Republican assault on Medicare is painfully clear, and the American 
people will never support this anti-elderly special interest agenda.

  Republicans deny that their Medicare cuts will fund tax breaks for 
the wealthy. This time the leopard claims that it really has changed 
its spots, but the Republican budget clearly anticipates $60 billion in 
revenue increases from tax extenders and closing of selected corporate 
loopholes in order to fund $60 billion in new taxes for the undeserving 
rich. Without those lavish tax breaks, they would not need to cut 
Medicare by $167 billion. The Medicare trust fund should not be a slush 
fund for tax breaks for the rich.
  There are appropriate ways to reduce Medicare spending and improve 
the

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quality at the same time. Mr. President, we have had extensive hearings 
in this body, chaired by our friend and colleague Senator Harkin, that 
has reviewed in very careful detail the billions of dollars that can be 
saved under Medicare by dealing more effectively with fraud and abuse. 
We can save tens of billions of dollars from unnecessary 
hospitalization--20 to 30 percent of hospitalizations are unnecessary--
by trying to provide preventive services to keep the seniors at home or 
in a setting so they can be treated with good quality care in less 
costly settings.
  We are talking about tens of billions of dollars that can be saved 
from avoiding adverse drug reaction. When our seniors are taking 
prescription drugs which are in conflict with each other and cause new 
illness and sickness, there are ways of dealing with this issue that 
can save the seniors enormous distress and pain and sickness and 
illness and plus save our system billions of dollars. But we have not 
even attempted to consider any of these items in this program.
  The harsh cuts in Medicare contained in the Republican budget are a 
repudiation of our historic commitment to Social Security, because the 
distinction between Medicare and Social Security is a false one.
  Medicare is part of the same compact between the Government and the 
people as Social Security. The compact says, ``Contribute during your 
working years, and we will guarantee basic income and health security 
in your retirement years.''
  No budget plan that purports to be part of a Contract With America 
should break America's contract with the elderly. It is bad enough to 
propose these deep cuts in Medicare at all. It is even worse to make 
these cuts in order to pay for an undeserved, unneeded tax break for 
the wealthiest Americans.
  We do not have to destroy Medicare in order to save it. Congress will 
never allow the Medicare trust fund to become bankrupt. I know that. 
The American people know it. It is time for Republicans to stop raiding 
Medicare, and join in sensible steps to improve and strengthen it for 
the future.
  Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to address the Senate. I 
yield the floor.

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