[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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