[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 81 (Wednesday, June 9, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6732-S6733]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MEDICARE
Mr. BREAUX. Mr. President, when I first got into this business of
being involved in Congress many years ago and also involved in
fundraising activities, I remember trying to compose a fundraising
letter. I sat down at my desk and drafted one. I thought I put out a
pretty good fundraising letter to constituents saying why I thought I
was the best person running for a particular office and would they
please consider sending a contribution to me because I was obviously
the best person for the job.
I shared the draft of my fundraising letter with one of the
professional people who does this for a living. He looked at it, read
it and said: This will never do.
I said: Why?
He said: It is not outrageous enough.
I said: What do you mean?
He said: In order to get people to extend money to you in your
election, you have to be outrageous in the letter, be as outrageous as
you possibly can; don't worry about whether it is totally accurate.
Just make sure it gets the people's attention and really scares the you
know what out of them in order for them to feel like it is absolutely
essential that to save their future, they need to send you a political
contribution.
I said: I am not going to do that. It doesn't fit how I operate, and
I think it is a wrong thing to try and scare people.
Apparently, there are organizations in this city that think
otherwise. I call to my colleagues' attention one of them called the
National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. It is a
very noble-sounding organization. They sent out this letter, a bright
yellow thing, and it came in an envelope that is enough to look like it
is from the Internal Revenue Service.
It says: ``Urgent Express. Please expedite. Dated material
enclosed.''
It would really get your attention if you walked out to the mailbox
and received this. But also, if you are a senior, you would be scared
to death if you thought what they were telling you was true.
It starts off by saying the Breaux-Thomas effort to fix Medicare is
going to basically destroy Medicare by giving you a voucher instead of
a guaranteed contribution for your Medicare benefits. No. 1, that is
absolutely, totally inaccurate, incorrect, misleading, false and
anything else you want to call it.
What we do is give seniors the same type of system that every one of
us as Federal employees, including Members of the Senate, has. Under
our plan, it is guaranteed in law that the Federal Government will
contribute 88 percent of the cost of whatever plan the seniors take.
The seniors would pay about 12 percent. That is what they pay now. That
is not a voucher. For them to say it is a voucher is misleading, false,
and intended to simply scare people into giving more money.
If you look at the rest of their letter, they say you do not get
guaranteed benefits. That is not true. The statute clearly says that
you will have the same guaranteed benefits that you get under Medicare
today. That is in statute. That is guaranteed. What they have to say is
false.
What they are really trying to do, in addition to scaring seniors, is
they are trying to raise money from them; tell
[[Page S6733]]
them anything to scare them to death and hope they send money.
I was underlining all the times they said, ``please send money'' in
this letter. It is one after another.
It says on page 3: ``. . . we need your signature . . . and your
generous special donation . . . .''
Then they go on to say: ``We also need as generous a donation as you
can afford. . . .''
They then talk about sending a special donation to help us with our
effort, and by making a special donation today, we can help save
Medicare; endorsing this with as generous, and then they call it an
``emergency donation''--they go from ``special donation'' to send us an
``emergency donation'' to stop what Breaux and Thomas are trying to do
by fixing Medicare.
Then they say:
[Please] boost our grassroots efforts by including an
emergency contribution with your Petition. Your contribution
of [$10] or $25, will be used to reinforce [our] message. . .
. I've suggested [some] contribution amounts, but anything
you can give will help more than you know. Please decide the
most you can afford and enclose your check with your signed .
. . Petition in the enclosed envelope . . . .
Your emergency donation is needed ``along with your contribution of
[blank] or [blank] in the envelope provided.''
Mr. President, this is a fundraising letter intended to scare seniors
into digging into their pockets, into their retirement funds and
funding this operation so they can continue to put out false,
erroneous, inaccurate information, information which is simply not
true.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired. I would
like for him to go on.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator
from Louisiana be allowed as much additional time as he needs.
Mr. BREAUX. This is not the way to fix Medicare, by scaring seniors.
They do not mention that under the current Medicare program the
premiums are going to double by the year 2007 if we do not do anything
to fix it. That should really scare seniors into saying we need to do
something to fix the program for our children and our grandchildren.
But to send out false information calling the program a voucher, which
it clearly is not, and to say it does not have the defined benefits,
which it clearly does, all under the guise of scaring seniors into
digging into their pockets and sending money that they need for food
and groceries and extra Medicare benefits that they do not get now is
something they should be ashamed of.
I think all of us know what they are trying to do. We just have to
stand up and say it like it is and call it what it is. This is
shameful.
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