[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 72 (Wednesday, June 5, 2002)]
[House]
[Page H3165]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             CREATING A MEDICARE PRESCRIPTION DRUG BENEFIT

  (Mr. GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GREEN of Texas. Madam Speaker, I rise today to talk about the 
pressing need to create a prescription drug benefit under Medicare.
  For almost a decade, Congress has been talking about a Medicare 
prescription drug benefit, and every time this issue comes up, excuses 
are made that it is just too expensive and we cannot afford it. 
Meanwhile, seniors are struggling every day to find ways to afford 
their life-saving medicines. They pay some of the highest prices in the 
world for their prescriptions; but because Medicare lacks a 
prescription drug benefit, 40 percent of the seniors pay for their 
prescriptions entirely out of pocket.
  Last year, the Congressional Budget Office was projecting surpluses 
well into the next decade. We had the opportunity to do something about 
this. But instead of using the surpluses to create a Medicare drug 
benefit, we passed a bloated tax cut that eroded these surpluses and 
sent us back into an era of deficit spending.
  This week we are going to take another vote to further extend these 
tax cuts. We have deficits as far as the eye can see, but the majority 
wants to dig that hole even deeper and pass tax cuts that will cost 
almost $1 trillion over 10 years and will benefit less than 2 percent 
of the American people. Yet we tell seniors we cannot afford a 
prescription drug benefit.

                          ____________________