[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 124 (Wednesday, September 11, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H10200-H10207]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 DOLE-GINGRICH ECONOMIC PLAN CONTAINS TAX BREAKS MOSTLY FOR THE WEALTHY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown] is recognized for 60 
minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, here we go again. The same folks who 
brought us the Government shutdown, the two Government shutdowns 
earlier this year and late last year, are back. Former Senator Dole and 
Speaker Gingrich are bringing us a $500 billion economic package, have 
proposed a $500 billion economic plan tax break package, mostly for the 
wealthy, that will result in more cuts to Medicare, more cuts to 
student loans, more cuts to Medicaid, and more cuts to environmental 
programs.
  Mr. Speaker, let us look at a bit of history as we discuss this Dole 
economic plan, and as we discuss the cuts in Medicare and what all of 
that means, and what that meant last year.
  Last year the plan of the Speaker, the Gentleman from Georgia [Mr. 
Gingrich], and Senator Dole was to give some $245 billion in tax breaks 
mostly for the wealthy, and they planned to pay for this plan by making 
$270 billion of cuts in Medicare and several billion, about $180 
billion cuts in Medicaid, several billion worth of cuts in student 
loans, and several billion of cuts in environmental protection.
  This $245 billion tax break mostly for the wealthy, which would 
result in the $270 billion in Medicare cuts, was the beginning of the 
unraveling of the Medicare Program. Let me quote what Speaker Gingrich 
said about Medicare, and let me quote what then-Senator Dole said about 
Medicare.
  Last October Speaker Gingrich, speaking to a group of insurance 
executives, all of whom would benefit greatly from this dismantling of 
the Medicare Program, said, ``Now we didn't get rid of Medicare in 
round one, because we don't think that is politically smart. We don't 
think that is the right way to go through a transition. But we believe 
that Medicare is going to wither on the vine.''
  The same day, speaking to another group, a group called the American 
Conservation Union, then-Senator Dole, who was leading the fight for 
the Medicare cuts in the Senate, said, ``I was there, fighting the 
fight, voting against Medicare, one of 12, because we knew it wouldn't 
work in 1965.''
  Since that time, the same people that tried to, on the one hand, say 
they are here to try to defend Medicare and save Medicare, are 
attacking Medicare under their breath, attacking Medicare behind closed 
doors in Republican caucuses, and occasionally letting it slip and 
attacking Medicare in public.
  One prominent member of the Committee on Ways and Means called 
Medicare socialized medicine. The majority leader, the gentleman from 
Texas [Mr. Armey], said that in a free society Medicare would not 
exist, whatever that means. Other prominent Republicans have labeled 
Medicare a program of socialism, a program that does not make sense for 
people, a program that we simply do not need.
  Mr. Speaker, the point is that this crowd, Gingrich, Dole, the 
gentleman from Texas, Mr. Armey, the leadership of the Republican 
Party, not mainstream Republicanism, which most people in this country 
that are Republicans I think are more likely to believe in, and not the 
mainstream Republicanism that supported Medicare

[[Page H10201]]

in past decades, but this new extremist crowd of Gingrich and Armey and 
the gentleman from Texas, Tom Delay, and some of the other leaders in 
the other House are simply opposed to Medicare. They wanted it to 
wither on the vine. They bragged about voting against it.
  It is pretty clear that this $245 billion tax cut they proposed last 
year and paid for by the $200-some billion tax cuts in Medicare are the 
way they can end the program of Medicare, end the programs of student 
loans, end some of the environmental protection measures.

                              {time}  1615

  That brings us to the point today, to the Dole program today he has 
proposed in the Presidential race. I might add that Senator Dole and 
his running mate, Mr. Kemp, came to the Republican Caucus today to talk 
about how they were going to pay for the major tax break, mostly for 
the wealthy, and talk about how they were going to do the Medicare 
cuts.
  A few Republicans have stood up and been honest about what the Dole 
economic plan means. If you are going to provide $500 billion in tax 
breaks, mostly for the rich, then you are going to have to cut Medicare 
even more than then-Senator Dole and Speaker Gingrich proposed last 
year. That simply means that if it was $270 billion in cuts in Medicare 
last year, they are going to propose even more cuts this year, once 
they are honest with the public.
  What that really means is those senior citizens that are now paying 
$46 a month for Medicare premiums will have their premium at least 
doubled, to $90 or $100 or maybe $110 a month to pay for their premium. 
It also means that deductibles will be higher. It also means that 
copays will be higher. So that this party, this Gingrich-Dole party 
that says they are against tax increases, clearly want to put this 
senior citizen tax on Medicare beneficiaries. It is not $46 a month, 
which is what it used to be, or $5 or $10 copayments, what it used to 
be, or $50 deductible, what it used to be. All of a sudden it is 
probably going to be double that in order to pay for this huge $500 
billion in tax breaks, mostly for the wealthy.
  At the same time they are going to go right at the heart of student 
loans and end the student loan program that students in this country 
have been accustomed to, raise the prices on other kinds of student 
loans and student grants, cut student grants and raise the prices on 
other student loans, and in order again to pay for this $500 billion 
boondoggle, mostly for wealthy taxpayers, to go after programs that 
protect the environment, something the American people clearly will not 
stand for.
  I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I 
appreciate the opportunity to visit with the gentleman tonight and talk 
about this $548 billion tax cut that has become a political issue 
around the country. In fact I know the gentleman mentioned that Senator 
Dole was here today talking to the Republican leadership, and during 
that time I heard that he had mentioned that this whole campaign is 
about trust. I thought it was appropriate in that trust is important, 
whether you are running for the White House or Members of Congress or 
whatever elected office you have. But I noticed he wants us to believe 
that the $548 billion tax cut will not lead to higher budget deficits 
and increased interest rates.
  The gentleman mentioned earlier that the tax cuts will not work 
without getting into social programs like Medicare and maybe Social 
Security. But let us look at history. The gentleman mentioned the $245 
billion tax cut last year where Medicare was on the table to be cut. 
This year, at least this fall, nobody is talking about it on the 
Republican side because they want to wait until after the election 
before they come back and put that on the chopping block.
  But since Senator Dole talked about it, this campaign is about trust. 
It is really kind of hard, with what you have said, to talk about trust 
when you see what happened last year with the $245 billion tax cuts and 
the $270 billion, even using their terminology, the $270 billion cut in 
growth in Medicare spending.
  But again let us talk about that growth in Medicare spending. If you 
have 10 million, for example, people receiving Medicare today, and 5 
years from now you have 25 million that may be expected, these are 
numbers we pick out of the air, and we are not planning for that 
growth, then it is a cut.
  I know it is sometimes hard to explain that to folks. But let me 
mention today I saw in the New York Times the architect of the Reagan 
tax cut plan in the early 1980's, Murray Weidenbaum, said of Senator 
Dole's proposed tax cuts: Cutting income taxes alone is not going to 
energize the economy sufficiently to prevent a rise in the budget 
deficit.
  This last Sunday on ``Meet the Press,'' another architect or budget 
adviser, Richard Darman, who worked under both Presidents Reagan and 
Bush, reminded us that Reagan had to raise taxes five times after 
enacting the very popular 1981 tax cuts to make up for that lost 
revenue, and we still had our debt and deficit mushroom in the 1980's, 
even after five tax increases, after 1981.
  If my colleagues are building a campaign on trust, then let us look 
back at the past decade or two decades and see where that trust would 
be. I think the gentleman mentioned it, Senator D'Amato mentioned that 
under the Dole plan, funding for such programs like Medicare would 
definitely be affected. In fact his quote is, he went so far as to say: 
``I'm not running this year so I can say it and tell the truth.''
  I do not think that is what people in America want when they talk 
about trust, when they talk about all of us want a tax cut but we also 
want to balance the budget.
  Let me even quote another former U.S. Senator. Senator Warren Rudman 
from New Hampshire agrees when he says, ``Unless you are willing to do 
some major reforms in entitlements, there is no way you can do this.''
  What is an entitlement? That is a word in Washington we use but in 
our districts, entitlements are Social Security, they are Medicare, 
they are programs that people depend on to make sure they can have the 
quality of life that they should have.
  My concern is why is Senator Dole not telling the American people 
that that is what he wants to do for $540 billion in tax cuts, when 
they got burned last year by trying to do $245 billion, so they doubled 
it almost? And they are still going to attack Medicare, education, 
student loans. If you are building a campaign on trust, let us talk 
about that. Let us talk about it before November 5, instead of waiting 
until after a new Congress comes in, and then making those cuts.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Retaking my time for 1 moment, to my friend from 
Texas, that is exactly the point. Last year they proposed $245 billion 
in tax breaks, mostly for the wealthy, and the way they wanted to pay 
for those tax breaks, cuts in Medicare, going right to the heart of 
cutting student loans, and cutting environmental programs, they could 
not do because the public rose up in opposition to it. This year 
Senator Dole, former Senator Dole, wants to give a tax break, again 
mostly to the wealthy, of twice that amount, but they are not telling 
us how they are going to pay for it. It is clear the only way they are 
going to pay for it is go twice as hard at Medicare, twice as hard at 
student loans and twice as hard at the environment. But they look at us 
and say, ``Trust me until after the election is over, we'll tell you 
after the election.'' It is clear what they are going to do, go after 
the same programs the public would not stand for in 1995 and 1996 which 
they shut down the Government over, saying if we cannot have our 
Medicare cuts we are going to shut down the Government. What is this 
crowd going to do? If Senator Dole wins the election and Gingrich and 
the Republicans in the Senate take control, how are they going to run 
the Government then? Go right after Medicare, student loans, and the 
environment one more time.

  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Going back, let me say something else about 
budget cuts, obviously Medicare and student loans, but they have to go 
to discretionary spending if they do not do entitlements. Some of that 
discretionary money is Border Patrol, the FBI, crime control, airline 
safety. There are a lot of programs that would be on the chopping 
block. But again they doubled the tax cuts they wanted

[[Page H10202]]

in 1995 and 1996, they could not get them, and in Texas we call that a 
pig in a poke. Our folks are not going to buy it, and that is what this 
is. This proposed $500 billion tax cut is a pig in a poke.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. 
Gibbons] was here in 1965 when Medicare was created. At that time, half 
the senior citizens of America had no health insurance. Today only 1 
percent of senior citizens have no health insurance because of 
Medicare. Medicare clearly has worked. You look at what Speaker 
Gingrich has said about Medicare, that he wants to see it wither on the 
vine, and those are his words, not mine. You look at what the next top-
ranked Republican in Congress has said, Mr. Armey, that in a free 
society you would not have Medicare. You look at what one of the top 
Republicans in Ways and Means has said, he calls it socialized 
medicine. You look at what Senator Dole said. He said, ``In 1965 I was 
there fighting the fight, voting against Medicare, 1 out of 12, because 
it wouldn't work.'' It is clear when 99 percent of the elderly in this 
country have health insurance and can live the last years of their life 
with dignity knowing that most of their health care will be taken care 
of that it is a program that works. I resent, as I think everybody on 
this floor resents, the kind of talk that Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Armey 
and some of the others have said when they belittle Medicare and 
belittle what it has done for people in this country.
  I yield to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Gibbons].
  Mr. GIBBONS. First of all, this is a very important discussion. Let 
me say as one who was here, as the gentleman said, when Medicare was 
created, one of the unintended results that has come out of Medicare is 
that old age is now much kinder than it used to be. It is much more 
humane than it used to be, and Medicare itself has lifted millions of 
older folks out of poverty. But one of the unintended results that we 
never dreamed would happen is it has created in the American economy an 
infrastructure that can take care of the particular needs of old 
people. That is what has done so much.
  Medicare is going to have to make some changes to make sure that it 
is fiscally sound and in place for the people in the future. Those 
changes do not need to be radical. Essentially we need to get tough, 
effectively tough on cutting out the waste, fraud, and abuse. Then 
after we have done that, if there is any need to change the financing 
system, it should be changed. But we have a good program, it is very 
important that we maintain it, and it has really helped many millions 
of people in the United States.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I thank the gentleman from Florida. There have 
been efforts by the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Stupak] and me in the 
Committee on Commerce, and by the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. 
Pallone] to deal with the fraud questions, because we can save $80 or 
$90 billion in the next 7 years simply by attacking fraud, waste and 
abuse in a systematic way. That is the first step, not making these 
major cuts in Medicare in order to give tax breaks to the wealthiest 
people in our country.

  I yield to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior].
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments and 
for taking this special order out and for my friend from Florida, Mr. 
Gibbons, who has been a champion for Medicare and for elderly people in 
this country today.
  I would like to embellish a little, if I could, on what Sam Gibbons 
has talked about and how important this is, and comments you made about 
how important this is to our seniors and what a difference it has made 
over a period of time since 1965 when it became law.
  One of the things that has aggravated me in this debate the most was 
the fact that most people in politics and in the country do not seem to 
understand what the income level is of the people who are receiving 
Medicare today.
  The Department of Labor study that Secretary Reich released about a 
year ago, within the last year, indicated that 60 percent of our 
seniors have income of $10,000 a year or less. That includes their 
Social Security and their annuity if they have one. Ten thousand 
dollars a year or less. That is why this is such an important and, as 
it turned out, volatile issue in American society today.
  I have got a woman in my district, and she is a good friend of mine. 
I do not want to mention her name in this special order, but let me 
just put it this way. Margie is her first name. She was a riveter and 
made the B-29's that helped us win the Second World War. She is close 
to 80 years of age now. She worked all her life, helped us win the war 
and now she lives on her Social Security. After she gets done paying 
her rent, her Medicare, her medicine and her MediGap insurance, she has 
got $130 left for that month and that has got to go for food, for 
heating, for all her utility bills.
  That is why we have fought so hard to make sure that people like her 
do not have to pay an extra $700 a year in the next 4 or 5 years for 
Medicare, because they cannot afford it. It is a huge part of their 
annual income.
  Now we have got this proposal that Senator Dole and Mr. Kemp and Mr. 
Gingrich have put together that would cut taxes 15 percent. But the 
problem with that is, besides most of it going to the folks, very folks 
at the top, is that it would either blow a big hole in our deficit, and 
we have brought this deficit down from $290 billion 4 years ago to $116 
billion now. We have brought it down by 60 percent.

                              {time}  1630

  It is going to blow a big hole like we did during the eighties when 
we spent on defense and then cut the revenue out of the Government. Or 
the other option is you are going to have to cut from education and 
programs like Medicare.
  So the approach that the President has suggested and we are 
suggesting, where you target your tax relief to education, $10,000 tax 
deduction or $1,500 credit for years 13 and 14 in school; you target it 
on kids; or on the sale of your home, so the middle class gets a 
capital gains relief. Those things are more modest, although each in 
themselves is a rather large component, but they are much more modest 
than an across-the-board cut, and they target people who need it.
  So I thank my colleague for raising the issue of Medicare and how it 
fits into this debate. We are going to be there, protecting it, making 
sure it is solvent, as the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Gibbons] has 
talked to us about, and making sure that it is there for people. There 
is no reason why we cannot make sure that this program is there in the 
future.
  We, as you have correctly pointed out, have taken two generations out 
of poverty when they became seniors because of Medicare in 1965, and 
your numbers are absolutely on the mark: 30-40 percent of the people in 
this country who became seniors went into poverty, before Medicare. Now 
that number is down considerably from that figure, and it has been a 
wonderful program for many, many people. We are going to do all we can 
to maintain its viability, its solvency, and make sure it is there for 
future generations.
  I thank my colleague for his comments.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I would add, before yielding to the gentleman from 
New Jersey [Mr. Pallone], that it is important to keep in mind what he 
said when he talked about Marjorie in Macomb County, or I talked about 
people that I know in Lorraine or Medina or all over my district, that 
the proposal last year would have raised premiums, the monthly premium, 
from $46 to $85 or $90. It would have raised the deductible, now $250 a 
year, somewhat higher, and would have raised the copays, which are 
typically $5 or $10, to some higher amount.
  What is important about that is that they were cutting Medicare $270 
billion to pay for a tax cut of about that amount. Senator Dole 
proposes twice the tax break, again, mostly for the wealthy. Does that 
mean the premiums are going to go up from $46 to $110 or $120 or $130 a 
month? Does that mean that the deductible will go from $250 to $400 or 
$500, or the copays will go to $15 or $25? We do not know that. They 
are not telling us.
  In order to pay for a tax break of $550 billion, it is pretty clear 
the Medicare premium is going to go well over $100 a month, and you are 
talking, what Mr. Bonior said, that 60 percent of Medicare 
beneficiaries are living on less than $10,000 a year. While going from

[[Page H10203]]

$46 to $100 a month might not be very much for Mr. Armey, who talks 
about Medicare being socialism, or Mr. Gingrich or Mr. Dole or a Member 
of Congress, it is a lot for somebody living on $10,000 a year.
  I yield to my friend from New Jersey, Mr. Pallone, who has done more 
to protect Medicare and fight these cuts and Newt Gingrich's ``wither 
on the vine.''
  Mr. PALLONE. I thank the gentleman for what he said. I just wanted to 
follow up on what he and the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] said.
  It is amazing to me how the other party, the Republican leadership, 
keeps trying to talk about these changes in Medicare and these cuts in 
Medicare as if they do not really have an impact on real people. But 
they do.
  When both of you were talking about some lower-income seniors, I had 
the best experience with that when I had a senior forum in 1995, at the 
time when the Republican leadership was talking about eliminating the 
Medicaid payment for Medicare part B. In other words, if you are below 
a certain income so that you are eligible for Medicaid, right now 
Medicaid pays your part B Medicare premiums, which is for your doctor 
bills, to pay for your insurance so your doctor bills are covered.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. In other words, that $46 payment, if you are 
especially poor, that $46 payment the government will help you with so 
you can qualify for Medicare.
  Mr. PALLONE. Exactly. These were people that could not even afford to 
pay the $46 that the average person pays now for Medicare part B to pay 
for their doctor bills. Under the Republican proposal that was 
considered by this House, and actually passed by this House in 1995, 
that money would have been taken away. So essentially those really low 
income senior citizens would not have had Medicaid paying for that 
Medicare part B premium.
  I was talking to people who could not afford to pay another $7 or $8 
a month.

  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I think it is important to remember that the 
people that need help on paying their Medicare premium, the $46 a 
month, are not usually people that have been on welfare all their 
lives. They are usually people that have been working all their lives, 
that never made a lot of money, that want to live their last year in 
dignity.
  I remember in the Committee on Commerce the gentleman and I and 
others worked on an amendment to at least, as bad as the Medicare bill 
overall was, to at least put that part of the Medicare law back into 
place, that Government would help those people that worked all their 
lives in perhaps minimum wage or slightly above, to help them with 
their Medicare premium, so they in fact would qualify for Medicare. If 
I recall, that was voted down on a party line vote because Speaker 
Gingrich did not want it in the law.
  Mr. PALLONE. Not only strictly party line, every Republican voted 
against it, but if you remember when it came to the floor, Speaker 
Gingrich had said he was going to correct it and he never did. He 
actually came here one day in the well and said he was going to correct 
that, and it was not going to be in the bill when it came to the floor, 
and he never did.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. If I recall, he said he had corrected it 
initially. Then a staff person said, ``Newt, come over here,'' and he 
explained he had not. And he ignored it and said, ``We will take care 
of it later.'' It has not been. Fortunately, a Presidential veto 
stopped it from happening.
  Mr. PALLONE. We are primarily talking about widows, elderly women 
whose husbands had passed on and who did not have any pension or 
anything to pay their way, and were therefore eligible for this, what 
they called qualified Medicare beneficiaries.
  I only mention that again by reference to the comments that the two 
of you have made, which is whenever you have these Medicare cuts, there 
is no free lunch. Essentially what it does is drive up costs in every 
other way.
  You mentioned about the higher premiums for Medicare part B that were 
proposed by the Republicans in 1995. You mentioned the higher 
deductibles. You mentioned the higher copayments. But we also had this 
year, in 1996, actually as part of the budget that the Republicans 
passed in the spring, the idea of eliminating balanced billing.
  In other words, essentially, if you decided you wanted to stay in 
traditional Medicare, you did not want to go into an HMO or managed 
care, under the present Republican budget for 1996, the one that passed 
in 1996, you could actually be charged an unlimited amount by the 
physician over and above what Medicare could pay.
  So if it is not a question of a higher premium or a higher deductible 
then there are going to be overcharges. They basically have that right 
on the table now as we speak in 1996, that doctors can charge unlimited 
amounts over and above what Medicare could pay, now pays, if you stay 
in your traditional Medicare plan.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, taking back my time for a moment, the 
changes that Speaker Gingrich and Mr. Dole put into the Medicare and 
Medicaid bill, will go the exact opposite direction of where we wanted 
to go in detecting fraud, waste, and abuse, rooting it out and 
eliminating it.
  There is the balanced billing issue, there is the issue that allows a 
doctor, which is prohibited now under the law, but which they want to 
allow a doctor to be able to refer a patient to an MRI facility or some 
other diagnostic or clinical facility that the doctor owns, and then go 
ahead and charge the Government for the referral and the original 
visit, and then the diagnostic equipment and treatment at that center. 
It was one issue after another issue that they opened up to more fraud, 
waste, and abuse, in a system that already has 10 or 15 percent fraud, 
waste, and abuse.
  The first thing we need to do with Medicare and Medicaid is not make 
cuts to pay for a tax break for a relatively small number of very 
wealthy people. The first thing we need to do is root out the waste, 
fraud and abuse. Then we can deal with the fiscal issues with Medicare. 
But do not charge senior citizens, raise their premium from $46 to $110 
a year, and raise the deductibles and copays.
  Mr. PALLONE. I wanted to raise three other instances. It is not just 
seniors that are going to end up paying more because of these cuts; the 
general public will as well. First of all, the fact, I do not think you 
mentioned it, you may have, the fact when you cut Medicare, and it is 
already happening, those that have supplemental insurance, most seniors 
carry supplemental, Medigap type insurance, the cost of that keeps 
going up.
  I see the gentlewoman from Connecticut is here, who has been so much 
involved and taken a leadership role on this issue. In our States, New 
Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, Medigap insurance costs have gone up 
from 11 to 14 percent every year in the last few years, all time highs. 
A lot of that is attributed to the cuts in Medicare. If you cut 
Medicare, then you are going to see higher costs for your Medigap 
insurance.
  Also in New Jersey, let me give you an example, most of the hospitals 
that I represent in my district rely on Medicare and Medicaid for a 
majority of their reimbursement, a majority of the money they are 
taking in. When there is a shortfall, either they close or they find 
some other way to pay for things. We have seen arise in uncompensated 
care. We actually have a tax, if you will, on uncompensated care, that 
we end up paying.
  So the general public ends up paying for the difference too. Taxes 
and costs go up for the general public, because the hospitals are not 
getting the reimbursement rate they were previously getting. So it is 
not just seniors that are going to pay more. Everyone is going to pay 
more, and they are going to pay it in various ways that maybe are not 
as obvious, but they still end up paying.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I really am delighted to join with my 
colleagues tonight, and I thank the gentleman from Ohio for his 
leadership on this effort. Just in listening to the conversation, there 
is not anyone who has suggested that we should not be looking at making 
the Medicare program a stronger program, a better program, in a variety 
of ways. No one has their head in the sand to say that hey, it is good. 
It was started in 1965, we have now insured 99 percent of seniors. In 
the past that was 46 percent of seniors

[[Page H10204]]

who had health insurance. But how do we go ahead and make it better?
  My colleagues were talking about the issue of fraud and abuse. There 
is in the system, I have introduced legislation, others have introduced 
legislation, to try to correct that problem. We did not remove the 
monitoring mechanism and the way to make sure that these restrictions 
on fraud and abuse would be lifted, rather than to look at them and 
refine it, the whole issue of holding down the costs, because our 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle will say they are trying to 
hold costs down.
  What is amazing to me is they only want to hold the costs down for 
America's seniors and for working families. You can hold the costs 
down, but in order to hold the costs down all over in the health care 
system, you have to hold the costs down in insurance companies, on 
hospitals, on doctors, on pharmaceutical companies, and everyone else. 
Why are we just singling out seniors to do that with, and thereby 
increasing their premiums and deductibles? They are not talking about 
doing anything about holding costs down in any other place in the 
system.
  Also, another point, where they held up their trustees' report and 
talked about how the trustees said we had to fix the program, that was 
$90 billion. We voted here for a democratic bill that talked about $90 
billion, the difference now between $90 and $270 and that tax break of 
$245 billion for the wealthiest Americans. Now Mr. Dole comes up here 
and he says to us that he wants a tax cut, and he is going to look at 
$600 billion in a tax cut, and we know through CBO and others about 
that potentially $300 billion in a cut for Medicare?
  My point is that we know there ought to be changes, but the question 
is, and I know my colleagues have talked about this already, but the 
litany from the leadership on the other side of the aisle about fixing 
this program ought to put the fear of God into the public and give a 
sense of who can they trust on this issue? Mr. Dole, who talked about 
being proud of being 1 of 12 that he voted against Medicare because it 
was a program that did not work? Our colleague, Bill Thomas, who not 
just a month ago on this floor talked about Medicare as a socialist 
system? The majority leader on the other side, saying that this is a 
program that he would not be part of in the free world? Mr. Gingrich, 
talking about it withering on the vine? Mr. D'Amato, from the other 
body, talking about how with this new Dole tax plan, that he believes 
and knows that there are going to have to be drastic cuts in the 
Medicare program?
  It is a question of who do you trust to fix the program, a good 
program that could be made better. That is what this is about. And that 
is why I think it is an education process for the American people to 
understand this debate and truly know who wants to fix it, and who 
ultimately would like to see it done in to their peril.
  So I thank my colleague for giving me the opportunity of having this 
conversation with all of you tonight on this issue.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I thank my friend from Connecticut, who has done 
such a marvelous job in showing leadership, in not just protecting 
Medicare against major budget cuts from Speaker Gingrich and Mr. Dole, 
but also offering alternatives to strengthen Medicare and make it work 
for the next generation.
  I would add on one thing to what the gentlewoman from Connecticut 
said, when she talked about holding down costs. Mr. Gingrich, in 
talking about Medicare withering on the vine and Mr. Dole saying it 
would not work when he voted against it 30 years ago, and Mr. Thomas 
calling it socialized medicine, and on and on and on, they want to 
increase costs to senior citizens. They want to double the premiums and 
copays and deductibles. But they really see Medicare as sort of a piggy 
bank, that you have this big pot of money, a slush fund or piggy bank, 
whatever term you want to use.

                              {time}  1645

  Medicare is a big program. A lot of money goes through Medicare every 
year in taking care of tens of millions of seniors' health care. What 
has happened is they first want to raid this piggybank or slush fund to 
the tune of $270 billion in tax breaks, mostly for the rich. Now that 
Mr. Dole has proposed a bigger tax break, they want to cut it even 
more.
  Mr. Speaker, they also want to raid it in another way, and that is 
some of the programs they have, so that Medicare does in fact wither on 
the vine. Mr. Gingrich has proposed something called medical savings 
accounts, which allows insurance companies to raid this piggybank or 
raid this slush fund.
  It is no secret or it is no coincidence, I should say, that, when Mr. 
Gingrich made his little speech about Medicare withering on the vine 
when he said we did not get rid of Medicare in round one because we did 
not think it was politically smart to do that, and we do not think it 
is the right way to go through a transition, but we believe it is going 
to wither on the vine. When Mr. Gingrich said that back in October of 
1995, he was speaking to a group of insurance company executives, all 
of whom will benefit from his Medicare plan.
  So, first of all, he takes money out of Medicare to go to a tax break 
for the richest Americans. Then the money that is left in Medicare will 
not be spent on senior citizen health care to the same degree that it 
is now. The money that is left, much of it will go to those insurance 
companies for bigger profits and more money for them.
  So we see already a declining amount of money in Medicare as a result 
of the Gingrich tax breaks for the rich. We see a further diminishing 
of this Medicare pot that should go to people like Margie in Macomb 
County, or people like the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] was 
talking about. Instead of going to them, it is going to insurance 
executives. It is going to the people at Golden Rule, in Indiana, to 
the Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Those are the people that Mr. Gingrich was 
speaking to that day. It is one thing after another that way.
  Mr. Speaker, the reason Medicare will wither on the vine under the 
Gingrich plan is he will cut the amount of money in it with the tax 
breaks. We will see more of the health care dollars going to insurance 
companies so that senior citizens will have even less, and then the 
system literally does wither on the vine.

  He was speaking correctly when he said it would wither on the vine 
under his proposal. He was not lying to the American people if he gets 
his way. But he is not going to get his way because the four of us and 
dozens of others in this body will continue to fight that. The 
President will continue to fight that. Clearly, the American people 
have been on our side because the Republicans shut the Government down 
in order to give this big tax break and make Medicare cuts.
  So it is clear that the more people know about the Gingrich-Dole plan 
on Medicare, that they want to double premiums and increase copays and 
increase deductibles, the more the people will be unhappy about it.
  I yield to my friend from New Jersey.
  Mr. PALLONE. I also wanted to say, I know the gentleman mentioned 
Medicaid as well, and we talked about that a little, and the same 
phenomena, particularly by reference to what it means for people other 
than seniors, their children and grandchildren. A part of the 
Republican leadership strategy from the beginning has been to also cut 
back on Medicaid, and the majority of the money in Medicaid right now 
pays for nursing home care. So, again, it primarily deals with taking 
care of the health care needs of the senior citizens.
  We fought a very hard battle, you and each of the four people and the 
others that spoke here this afternoon, in trying to make sure that 
Medicaid was not cut back and also that it was not block granted. If it 
was block granted and it was cut significantly, I think what you would 
have seen essentially is that the States, in taking on more 
responsibility and relaxation of Federal standards and Federal 
requirements, basically would have shifted more and more of the 
Medicaid burden, the nursing home burden, if you will, to children, to 
spouses, to grandchildren.
  Right now, as we all know and we have talked about this before, a 
State cannot go after a spouse for certain purposes. They cannot take 
their home. They cannot take their car. They have to leave them a 
certain

[[Page H10205]]

amount of living expenses if one's spouse is in a nursing home. They 
cannot go after children or grandchildren to pay for Medicaid nursing 
home expenses. But the Republican legislation that was before the House 
last year and again this year basically would have eliminated those 
requirements and allowed the States to go after those people in order 
to recover costs.
  So what we would have seen is the cuts in Medicaid to finance these 
tax breaks primarily for wealthy individuals. More of the costs would 
have been shifted to the spouse, who is still living at home, to the 
children, to the grandchildren. Again, there is no free lunch. The end 
result of that would have been hardship for those people, hardship for 
children who instead of paying college costs, which are a big burden 
for them, for their children, would end up having to pay for nursing 
home care for their parents.
  Mr. Speaker, that is the kind of shifting of costs that really 
bothers me. The other side of the aisle, Gingrich and the Republican 
leadership, they want to give the impression that we can make these 
cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and it is not going to matter. It is not 
a big deal.
  They keep saying we are really only cutting the growth, we are not 
doing anything that will harm anybody. But it has a direct impact in 
the shifting of costs not only to the senior citizens but also to their 
families. That is what I think we fought very hard against and we have 
to keep fighting for.

  Mr. BONIOR. Would the gentleman yield on that?
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. BONIOR. The gentleman makes a very good point. We are not talking 
here about something that will affect just seniors in this country, as 
he has so eloquently just stated. We are talking about the family who 
has kids coming up and maybe want to go to college, and they have aging 
parents who may need nursing home care or who may be on Medicare. When 
these things occur at that level of reduction, for our parents and our 
grandparents who are 65 and older, and who may need nursing home care 
and need that Medicaid payment, then those responsibilities and those 
pressures and those demands fall on people that are basically our age 
here who have kids and then who have parents who are getting up there 
in age.
  That financial pressure is just quite incredible not only financially 
but mentally as well, the stress of having to make that decision 
whether you are going to send your son or daughter to college or you 
are going to take care of your parent.
  Mr. Speaker, this was something that occurred on a very regular basis 
prior to 1965, before we had Medicare, before we had a Medicaid program 
in this country. What was occurring is when elderly people got ill, 
either their kids basically took care of them or they had to live in 
poverty. So what we are trying to do here is keep all the units of the 
family solvent. We are talking about kids who want to go to school. We 
want to support the student loan program. They wanted to cut it back.
  We are talking about elderly parents who may need nursing home care. 
We want to make sure that it is there for them in terms of Medicaid. 
They wanted to repeal the whole program, not only repeal the program 
but do away with the regulations that allowed our parents and 
grandparents who may have to have nursing home care to live with some 
sense of dignity, where they are not tied up, where they are not gagged 
or fed improperly or abused, as they were prior to the government 
making regulations to stop this sort of abuse of our parents and 
grandparents.
  So the gentleman from new Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is right on in terms 
of dealing with this question of the burden of leadership shift, and it 
will shift dramatically, as it has in instances already, to those folks 
at home who have children and who have aging parents as well.
  Ms. DeLAURO. If the gentleman would yield just on that point.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I yield to the gentlewoman.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, it is so clear. Nursing home care and what 
the proposal was with regard to Medicaid really gets into the heart and 
soul of what families are struggling with today.
  It is a very difficult decision to send a loved one to a nursing 
home. You make it with a sense of, am I doing the right thing for my 
elderly grandparents or parents; am I making the right decision for 
them, for me; what happens with my children?
  And this whole Medicaid proposal that says the money goes to the 
State, States will make a determination and make a choice between 
whether or not they spend their Medicaid dollars on children or on 
seniors in nursing homes. They were going to remove the national 
standards on nursing home care, as has been pointed out, put the 
burdens on spouses and adult children.
  Once again it was turned around. Suppose we find ourselves in a 
situation where our parent, if this went through, if we were not able 
to hold it back this time around, that the family would then, having 
made the decision of putting someone in a nursing home, have to take 
the person back into their home. What kind of cost is that? What kind 
of help do I provide----

  Mr. BONIOR. If the gentlewoman would yield. The cost is about $39,000 
a year for nursing home care. It is a phenomenal cost.
  Ms. DeLAURO. It really is. I went to speak to the Milford Senior 
Center yesterday. They have their club today. There were about 200 
people. And we were talking about this, and we were talking about the 
nursing home care. After it, a woman came up to me. She says, you know, 
she says, I rely on the nursing home. My husband is there.
  It was a very tough decision for her to put her husband in the 
nursing home. She said: He is getting wonderful care and they are 
taking good care of him. And she says: I would not be able to do that, 
I cannot do that if something should jeopardize all of that.
  That is what we were looking at. And, quite frankly, my concern is 
that we beat that battle back one time. It was the American public, the 
outrage of the American public on what was going to happen. Now we 
listen to people over and over again coming back and talking about the 
same things again; that they are not----
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. The same thing, only worse, I would add, because 
now the tax break mostly for the wealthy is twice the size Mr. Gingrich 
and Mr. Dole originally planned, which means, I guess, they will not 
tell us, but we have to figure it will mean twice as large a cut in 
student loans, twice as large a cut in the environment and twice as 
large a cut in Medicare or Medicaid or twice as large an increase in 
premiums, deductibles and co-pays. They simply will not tell us.
  I yield to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior].
  Mr. BONIOR. This goal of the Gingrich-Dole-Kemp plan here is indeed a 
bridge to the past, to pick up on a metaphor that has been thrown 
around the last few weeks. They are reaching deep into the past to a 
day where we did not have Medicare for our grandparents, where we did 
not have Medicaid that would take care of nursing homes, or we do not 
have help for our students.
  It is quite bizarre, especially given the fact that my colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle consider themselves the epitome of 
futurism, the futurist ideas that they were espousing at the beginning 
of the Congress. And yet where do they want to take us? They want to 
take us way back when the security for the family was nonexistent 
basically in this country, in many ways.

  So it is very, very perplexing. What we need to do is build on the 
programs that we have, streamling them, making them more efficient but 
making sure that they are there so that people will have the 
opportunity to lead productive and good lives.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Think about the programs, and there are certainly 
Government programs that have wasted dollars and Government programs 
that have not worked, but think of the two programs we are talking 
about most today, a couple or three programs, Medicare and student 
loans.
  Medicare has lifted millions of the elderly out of poverty in the 
last decade or two or three of their lives. Student loans have provided 
opportunities for millions of middle class families to send their 
children to college.
  Both programs obviously can use some adjustment, but it is clear from 
what Mr. Dole's campaign manager said, Senator D'Amato said, what Mr. 
Kemp, what Mr. Dole, Mr. Gingrich

[[Page H10206]]

said, that they really want to eliminate these programs in the next 
decade. They are two programs that work so very well for middle class 
America, for poor America, for everybody.
  Mr. BONIOR. On top of that, let me tell my colleagues what is 
especially disturbing to me. I remember picking up maybe 18 months ago 
the first volume of the Progress in Freedom Foundation's newsletter, 
that is the foundation founded by the Speaker, Mr. Gingrich. And in 
their newsletter, actually it was more of a newspaper as opposed to a 
newsletter, I remember vividly reading the headlines. And it was, for 
heaven's sake eliminate Social Security.
  That is where they are going next. That is where they are headed 
next. And they have already got their think tanks working, they are 
already talking about it. And we told, folks, that they were coming 
after Medicare. And the proof is in their own words as we have 
mentioned here on several occasions this evening in this 1 hour special 
order: wither on the vine, proud to have voted against it, no place in 
the free world. And now they got folks working on getting rid of the 
Social Security System.

                              {time}  1700

  It has been a lifesaver for people in this country.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. There are the intellectuals, quote unquote, in the 
Gingrich revolution that sit over at the Heritage Foundation or sit 
over in their ivory towers and somewhere around the Capitol in one of 
these really fancy buildings and think up all these great ideas and are 
totally out of touch with Margie in Macomb County and totally out of 
touch with the woman that Ms. DeLauro talked about, that have real 
problems, living on $8,000 a year, that struggle, that were able to 
send their kids to college on student loans, that need their Social 
Security, that use Medicare in the last couple of decades of their 
lives. They are coming up with these ideas and then these are the ideas 
they are trying to foist on the American people out of some think tank. 
The Social Security, Medicare, student loans, we are going to keep 
fighting for it because those are important and those have made 
millions of Americans who have brought them into the middle class and 
kept them in the middle class. That is what all of us should be here 
for.
  Mr. PALLONE. I just wanted to follow up. It is funny you are talking 
about these Washington think tanks. I was just harking back to during 
the August district work period when we were not in Washington, I had a 
lot of senior forums. Over and over again, I just got these commonsense 
approaches from the seniors in my district about what to do to improve 
Medicare. And they all talked about long-term care, preventative 
measures.
  In New Jersey, we have with the casino revenue fund. We refinance a 
program where if you are below a certain income, I think it may be 
probably close to $20,000 now for a two-family household, where if you 
are below that income, the casino revenue money pays for your 
prescription drugs. You have to pay like $5, but then you get the rest 
of the prescription drug for free, paid for with the casino money.
  Also the State has experimented, I know other States have as well, 
with home health care. In other words, where over and above Medicare 
right now, they will pay for a certain type of home health care cost on 
an experimental basis. All the seniors kept telling me the whole time 
is, why are you guys talking about these negative changes, if you will, 
that the Republicans are proposing on Medicare. Why not think of some 
positive ways to save money through prevention or through dealing with 
long-term care problems. And it is true. There is no question that in 
New Jersey, once that prescription drug benefit came into play with the 
casino revenue money, which we were fortunate to have, that it saved a 
lot of money for people that did not have to be hospitalized or did not 
have to be placed in nursing homes or boarding homes. And the same with 
the home health care.

  They have personal care, attendant service for certain people that 
come in so that they can stay in their apartment or stay in their 
house. Over and over again, studies have been done for the House of 
Representatives, for various committees, that show if you move in that 
direction, that ultimately you will save money because you prevent 
institutionalized care, which is so much more expensive. We do not hear 
about that from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. They 
just want to talk about scrapping Medicare, having it wither on the 
vine.
  Ms. DeLAURO. That is such a relevant point, because what all of the 
data indicates is that the point was, in terms of health insurance, 
that you spread the risk so that the more people who are insured and 
who are covered, that is the way that you bring costs down. When you 
are operating in 2 systems, if you will, with people who have it and 
people who do not have it, people who do not have it get their health 
care from somewhere and that cost does not go into a vapor. Everybody 
else who does have it picks up that cost.
  So the whole point has been, how do we get more people insured to 
lower the cost of health care. What we ought to be doing is thinking 
about that future, of insuring more people. We have only one system 
today where 99 percent of the population are covered, and that is 
Medicare for seniors.
  And one of the items on the agenda, the Families First agenda that 
the Democrats have proposed for implementing after January 1 is to see 
if we can try to insure children from zero to 13 so that we have got 
another pool of people covered for insurance, again, to give parents 
the peace of mind that they have the opportunity to get insurance for 
their kids and make that more affordable.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. And to ultimately save money so the 12-year-old 
child with the cold will go to the family doctor rather than waiting 
until she is sicker and going to an emergency room.

  Ms. DeLAURO. So the point is, where do we need to go, as my colleague 
from New Jersey said, with regard to improving Medicare. We need to 
look at home health care, which can save us money. We need to look at 
the cost of prescription drugs to bring that cost down. What is it, 
what is it in the mindset that says, let us unravel the one system that 
we have that is approaching coverage of most of the population, thereby 
holding the cost down and not build on it but rather unravel it and go 
back to where it is helter-skelter, when we ought to be moving in the 
direction of trying to cover more and more people today who are without 
insurance and to look at preventative measures. It is, as our colleague 
from Michigan said, it is a bridge to the past and not the bridge to 
the future that we need to be making in order to assure affordable good 
quality health care for everyone in this country.
  Mr. BONIOR. I will try to answer your question in terms of the 
mindset. It is the same mindset that denies proper labor guarantees in 
this country so people can bargain and organize in this country. It is 
the same mindset that, because of that, allows the society to become 
one that hires people who are temporary employees. The largest employer 
in the country is temporary manpower services now.
  It is the same mindset that has these folks working in our society 
without health insurance, without any pensions, certainly without any 
pension portability, and without many of the other benefits that were 
fought for, gained, and took us successfully, at the conclusion of the 
Second World War, into a very productive, most productive period in our 
history during the 1950's and 1960's.
  There is a huge retrenchment, there is a huge bridge to the past, 
pre-World War II, pre-1930's, and it is very, very scary. It is very, 
very scary. Where the protections of working men and women in this 
country are gone and the educational opportunities for our young people 
are becoming harder and harder to realize. And of course this assault 
on our seniors, their attacks on Medicare and Medicaid, and eventually, 
I predict, Social Security, if they are continued in power. So it is 
something that is worth fighting for, that we have fought for and will 
continue to do so.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. I think, in summary, we have a couple more 
minutes, thinking about the bridge to the future and making the student 
loan program, particularly the direct loan program, work, make it 
available to people, make Medicare continue to improve

[[Page H10207]]

Medicare and Medicaid so that we can deal with the increasing costs but 
continue to cover people and continue to give people, lift people out 
of poverty, as we have done, contrasted with this bridge to the past 
that we have talked about where we do not want to go back to the days 
when, before the GI bill, when there were not opportunities for middle-
class families to send their children or themselves to college.

  We do not want to go back prior to the 1930's, when there was not a 
Social Security Program. We do not want to go back to the period before 
1965, when there was not Medicare or Medicaid, when 50 percent, 54 
percent, I guess, of senior citizens in this country had no health 
insurance prior to the mid-1960's, and now only 1 percent has no health 
insurance. There is no reason to go back. That is why we need to look 
forward.
  I think the commitment, certainly from all four of us and many others 
here, is to continue to improve Medicare, continue to improve Medicaid, 
continue to improve the direct loan program, student loans overall, 
student grants, to take care of the elderly and to protect our natural 
resources by good environmental protection measures and to continue to 
give students opportunities, middle-class families, poor kids, give 
them opportunities that they can produce and they can give back to 
society.
  I think that is what we are asking, and it is a rejection of these 
tax breaks for the rich to make all of these cuts in programs that 
matter, Medicare, student loans, environment, but instead to make these 
programs more efficient, make them work, bridge to the future so that 
students will have that opportunity so all of us can grow together.
  I thank my friends from New Jersey, Michigan, and Connecticut.

                          ____________________