[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 21464-21465]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, over the past months, Americans have 
grown increasingly alarmed about the high levels of spending and debt 
we have seen under the new administration. They have become 
increasingly vocal about these concerns out of a growing sense that the 
White House does not seem to be listening to them, that it is talking 
over them.
  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the debate over health care and 
never more so than in the President's speech to Congress last week. For 
weeks and weeks, Americans had expressed their concerns about the 
Democrats' health care proposals at townhall meetings across the 
country. Yet the President returned from the August break with a speech 
that did not address any of them.
  Instead, he stated his intention to spend nearly $1 trillion on a 
plan he says will expand coverage without increasing costs or adding to 
the deficit. These are precisely the claims Americans are finding so 
difficult to square with reality. The speech itself was certainly well 
delivered, but in the end Congress is not going to be asked to vote on 
a speech. It is going to be asked to vote on specific legislation.
  In my view, the President's speech only highlighted the concerns that 
millions of Americans and Members of both parties in Congress continue 
to have with the Democratic plans for health care reform because when 
you strip away the pageantry of the speech itself, what you are left 
with is simply this: one more trillion-dollar government program and a 
whole lot of unanswered questions about how we are going to pay for it. 
What is it going to mean for seniors and small business owners, and how 
is it going to affect the quality and availability of care for millions 
of Americans, the vast majority of whom are happy with the care they 
have? These are legitimate questions, and it is unfair for anyone to 
dismiss those who ask them as either cranks or scaremongers. The 
answers to these questions impact some of the most important aspects of 
people's lives, and people just aren't getting answers.
  Take the issue of cost. The President says he is going to pay for his 
plan by cutting waste, fraud, and abuse out of the system. That raises 
a couple of questions. First of all, if there is such waste, fraud, and 
abuse, then why isn't the administration doing something about it 
already? Second, if we are seeing this kind of waste, fraud, and abuse 
in an existing government program,

[[Page 21465]]

why shouldn't we expect it to exist in the new government program the 
White House wants to create? Of course, we should root out waste, 
fraud, and abuse. I don't know anybody who is against that. But let's 
do it for its own sake, not to justify a very brandnew government 
program most Americans aren't even asking for.
  How about Medicare? The administration plans to pay for much of its 
health care proposals with hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to 
Medicare. A significant portion of this would involve cuts to Medicare 
Advantage, a program that serves more than 11 million American seniors, 
nearly 90 percent of whom say they are satisfied with it. But faced 
with questions about his proposed cuts to Medicare, the administration 
insists services to seniors won't be cut. Mr. President, this is 
absurd. How can the administration tell America's seniors with a 
straight face that it is about to cut $\1/2\ trillion from Medicare but 
that those cuts won't affect the program in any noticeable way?
  What about the hundreds of billions of dollars the administration 
would have to raise to pay for its plan even after its proposed cuts to 
Medicare? The White House hasn't said where it plans to get all of that 
money, but to most people, the answer is pretty obvious: more spending, 
more taxes, higher deficits--or, most likely, all three.
  What about the deficit? The White House says its health care plan 
won't add a dollar to the deficit. How do they square that with the 
fact that the Congressional Budget Office has said repeatedly and 
unequivocally that every proposal they have seen would, in fact, add 
hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit?
  Any schoolkid in America could tell you that creating a massive new 
government program will cost a lot of money, that cutting Medicare by 
hundreds of billions of dollars will lead to cuts in services people 
currently enjoy, and that higher taxes on small businesses will lead to 
even more job losses.
  These are serious questions. The administration's response to them is 
not. Their response is to accuse anyone who asks them of being a 
scaremonger and to give them the same two-word answer they gave 
everybody who questioned the stimulus: Trust us.
  When it comes to health care, Americans are saying these arguments 
don't add up. These are simple questions. The administration should 
answer them. If they can't, it is even further validation that the 
questions are worth asking.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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