[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 88 (Monday, May 22, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3052-S3053]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         The President's Budget

  Next, Mr. President, on the budget, the President of the United 
States will release his budget for 2018 this week. It could come as 
early as tomorrow. All indications are that it will be similar to his 
skinny budget from earlier this year. I want to remind everyone here in 
the Senate what a disaster that budget would be if it were ever 
implemented by Congress.
  The President told the American people he would help create jobs and 
provide greater economic security for families. This budget does 
exactly the opposite. It is not a jobs budget. It is not an economic 
security budget. It is a budget that takes a meat cleaver to the middle 
class by gutting programs that help them the most, including many that 
create jobs and power the economy. Transportation is cut. Education is 
cut. Programs that promote scientific and medical research are cut. 
Programs that protect clean air and clean water are cut. All of these 
programs are favored by the American people. They have been favored by 
a vast majority of my Republican friends across the aisle. But the 
President's budget is an outlier, way out there. It fits with Mr. 
Mulvaney's beliefs, but he was an outlier in the Congress when he 
called for the government to be shut down and when he wanted to have 
the government play so little a role in helping the middle class. That 
is harmful to America.
  Here is another one that really is worrisome: Recent reports say that 
the President's budget will target Medicaid for significant cuts--as 
large or larger than the $880 billion the House Republicans would cut 
in their TrumpCare bill. This would pull the rug out from so many 
Americans who need help--those suffering from opioid and heroin 
addiction, people in nursing homes and their families who care for 
them, the elderly, the disabled, and children.
  Medicaid has become a middle-class program. Opioid addiction. What 
about a 40- or 50-year-old couple who is trying to raise their kids, 
saving for college, and has a parent who needs to be in a nursing home. 
Right now, Medicaid pays for it. What are they going to do when that is 
cut? They have two choices: Shell a huge amount of money out of their 
own pockets, which they can't afford, or maybe bring mom or dad back 
home, where there may be no room for them. What a horrible choice. What 
a horrible choice. Well, that is what the President is proposing to do 
when he dramatically slashes Medicaid.
  I will repeat. Medicaid helps the very poor, but it also helps the 
middle class, and the majority of its money now seems to go to the 
middle class. I believe something like 60 percent goes to nursing homes 
or some high percentage like that.
  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a cut to Medicaid of 
this size would deprive roughly 10 million Americans of Medicaid 
benefits over the next decade. Medicaid has always benefited the poor, 
and that is a good thing, but I remind my colleagues that it has 
increasingly become a middle-class program. Here is where it goes: 
Medicaid provides benefits for 60 percent of Americans in nursing 
homes.
  Listen to this, Mr. President and my colleagues: Medicaid helps 1.75 
million veterans--1 in 10. It provides services for Americans 
struggling with opioid addiction, which is a problem that affects so 
many.
  If the reporting is accurate, these cuts to Medicaid that are in the 
President's budget carry a staggering human cost. Once again, Donald 
Trump is breaking his promise to the working people of America.
  We have seen promise after promise broken as if they did not even 
matter. What he said in the campaign and what he governs as has almost 
no overlap in so many areas. Here is what Candidate Trump said when he 
campaigned: ``I'm not going to cut Social Security like every other 
Republican and I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.'' He promised 
he would help take care of those suffering from opioid addiction. If he 
cuts Medicaid, he is breaking that promise--boom--right in half.
  Candidate Trump campaigned as a populist and said he wanted to help 
the working people, but since he has taken office, he has governed like 
a hard-right conservative, pushing policies that help the uber-wealthy 
at the expense of the middle class. TrumpCare and the budget the 
President will be proposing tomorrow says one thing and does another.
  Many of my Republican friends come from States that have 
significantly expanded their Medicaid Programs over the past few years, 
insuring hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of their 
constituents.
  Based on what we know about this budget, the good news--the only good 
news--is that it is likely to be roundly rejected by Members of both 
parties

[[Page S3053]]

here in the Senate, just as the last budget was. Democrats and 
Republicans, on the 2017 budget, virtually ignored the President and 
his proposal. We got together, and we compromised. Not everyone got 
everything they wanted, but we produced a budget that America can be 
proud of and one that helps the middle class.
  We have shown Democrats and Republicans, the House and Senate, can 
come together to compromise on appropriations in 2017. We should follow 
that same blueprint in 2018. We should ignore the President's budget 
which would devastate the middle class and instead work across the 
aisle to advance reasonable compromise legislation later this year.
  I yield the floor to my good friend from Texas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I came to the floor during the last part 
of the remarks of the distinguished Democratic leader, and it just 
reminded me of a headline I saw in this morning's newspaper that just, 
to me, exemplifies how dishonest, sometimes, the way questions are 
framed here when it comes to dealing with our financial 
responsibilities. The headline in the Washington Post talked about 
President Trump's proposal slashing Medicaid, like the Democrats have 
criticized the House healthcare replacement bill slashing Medicaid even 
though, as a factual matter, Medicaid would continue to grow year after 
year after year.
  As the distinguished Presiding Officer and I have previously 
discussed, one question is, What is a responsible rate of Consumer 
Price Index or inflation to deal with medical inflation so that when we 
return Medicaid to the States, spending at let's say 2016 levels, what 
is a responsible rate of continued growth to deal with medical 
inflation so that the States are not left with an unsustainable burden?
  But the idea that spending at current levels, plus an additional 
cost-of-living index year after year after year, means that Medicaid 
spending won't go up every year--next year it will be more than this 
year. The following year it will be more than next year. So only in the 
fevered imagination of, apparently, the headline writers at the 
Washington Post and in some of our Democratic friends could that be 
considered a cut. In the rest of the country, they would consider that 
as Medicaid growing, not being cut.
  It is true that one of the things the House did that I think is an 
important reform of one of our principle entitlement provisions was to 
put some sort of sustainable cap on the growth of spending on 
entitlements, which perviously had been uncapped.
  Some day there is going to be a day of reckoning in this country when 
it comes to spending. We have $20 trillion in debt. We know now that 
the Federal Reserve is loosening its hold on interest rates, that those 
are creeping up, and one of the estimates is that if interest rates due 
to improved economic performance were to reach historic norms, we would 
soon be paying more for interest on the national debt than we would be 
paying for defense spending. That is simply unsustainable, not to 
mention the fact that we would then be essentially appropriating 30 
percent of what the Federal Government spends and leaving 70 percent 
untouched.
  We can't get the country on a sustainable financial path just dealing 
with 30 percent of what the Federal Government spends, and we need to 
have a serious conversation, not a misleading characterization of the 
problem. We need a serious conversation about the reality facing our 
country and future generations because right now we are spending their 
inheritance, so to speak. In other words, I consider it an act of 
immorality for me to be spending money and forcing my children and 
future generations to pay it back. That is just not fair to them, and 
we need to come to grips with that sooner rather than later.