[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5543-5546]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THE BUDGET CRISIS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hultgren). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 5, 2011, the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Garamendi) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, thank you.
  I want to turn our attention to the issues that are before us today 
and see if we can have a better understanding of what has taken place.
  We just heard a little bit about honoring our troops. Let's be very 
clear about this. The Democratic Caucus in this House, the President, 
and the Senate will always and have always honored our troops. We are 
in the midst of a very serious budget crisis for this

[[Page 5544]]

year with very, very serious issues at stake, and the Republicans chose 
to attach to the funding bill numerous cuts that devastate important 
programs that affect the well-being of every man, woman, and child in 
this Nation and, indeed, around the world. Because of those cuts, as 
well as certain language that was added to the bill, we chose not to 
vote for the funding.
  The President has said, Stop the games. Stop playing around. Give us 
a straight up and down on funding the government without all of these 
add-ons and games that are being played by our Republican colleagues.
  The President has asked for a clean bill. We should give him a clean 
bill and carry on to fund the government and provide for our troops and 
our military families, and we will do that.
  Now let's understand what is at stake. Not only in the current year's 
budget, which is the next 7 months, but in the year beginning on 
October 12, the Republicans have put together a proposal that would 
devastate seniors and those who are unable to care for and to provide 
themselves with medical services--in other words, those dependent upon 
the Medicaid program.

                              {time}  1520

  Very straightforward. The proposal that was put out by the Republican 
caucus 2 days ago would terminate and stop Medicare as we know it 
today. Medicare is a program in which every working American pays into 
it, and when they became 65, they expect to receive the Medicare health 
care benefits that are guaranteed or at least have been guaranteed for 
the last 40-some years. That's a uniform benefit package across this 
Nation. It is a very successful program. It's one that Americans 
literally live long enough to get into. And yet the Republican caucus 
is proposing to terminate it, to end the Medicare program. And instead, 
turn over the $400 billion a year that goes into the Medicare services, 
turn it over to the private health insurance companies--the biggest 
gift ever given to the private health insurance companies.
  I know those companies. I was the insurance commissioner in 
California for 8 years. And I spent most every day of those 8 years 
chasing after the health insurance companies, forcing them to pay 
claims and stopping them from discriminating against people who had 
preexisting conditions and developing programs and policies that were 
underfunded, underpaid, and underperformed.
  That cannot happen to our seniors, but that's what the Republicans 
want to do. And we need to stop it. And we will because the seniors of 
this Nation already sense what is at hand. They already know that the 
Republican budget proposed would devastate one of the two pillars of 
the social safety net that every senior in this Nation at one time or 
another depends upon.
  The second pillar--we've already seen the path that this is going to 
go on--in 2004, the Republican caucus, together with the Republican 
President, George W. Bush, proposed to privatize Social Security. 
Fortunately, the revolt that started in the Democratic caucus of this 
House and carried across the Nation stopped that from happening.
  We know what's coming down the train track here, and that is another 
effort to privatize Social Security, to take those hundreds of billions 
of dollars and turn them over to Wall Street so Wall Street can play 
additional financial games.
  It will not happen, Americans will not give up Social Security and 
Medicare to satisfy the whims of the Republican caucus that seems 
determined upon destroying effective government in this Nation.
  I'd like to call upon my colleague from the great State of Oregon 
(Mr. DeFazio). If you will join me in this conversation and we will see 
where it takes us.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. Certainly his extraordinary and 
extensive experience as an insurance commissioner ably qualifies him to 
comment on what's going to happen when the Republicans kill Medicare 
and instead force future seniors into private insurance plans 
presumably sold through some sort of exchange.
  Now, of course the Republicans just spent the last year reviling 
ObamaCare, which creates exchanges for people who are uninsured. They 
said people who are uninsured should not be forced to go to exchanges 
and buy good standard policies. Well, now what they want to do is force 
future seniors to give up Medicare and force them to go to exchanges 
and buy private policies with some premium support.
  Now, there are a few problems with this issue. Among the things they 
repeal are the reforms of the insurance industry. And one of the most 
critical reforms, as far as seniors or older workers or older Americans 
go, or Americans who've ever been ill or ever had an ill kid, is 
removing the condition that an insurance company can have a preexisting 
condition exclusion. That is, you were sick once, they won't sell you a 
policy. Maybe they'll sell you a policy, but they will exclude that 
condition and other conditions they think you might have, and they're 
going to charge you 4, 5, 6, 10 times as much for your policy because 
you're a risky person. They only want the gravy.
  It also repeals another little trick of the industry. This has 
already stopped now. This is one of the most horrific things the 
insurance industry has done to people in America. Pay your premium 
every week. Your employer pays your premium every week.
  You get sick. This happened to a woman in Texas, actually Joe 
Barton's district. She had breast cancer. Needed serious treatment. The 
insurance industry, the insurance company she had, put a team on her 
case. Isn't that great. They want to help her out. No. They want to 
find out a way to throw her off the plan. And they found that once she 
had gone to a dermatologist and didn't tell them about it. And that 
might have been related to her breast cancer, so they threw her out of 
the plan.
  Now, the dermatologist wrote a letter to the insurance company and 
said, well, no, actually, no, this woman just kind of had a skin 
condition that has nothing to do with cancer, and you can't do this. 
And they did. And finally, to give them credit, Joe Barton intervened, 
called the president of the company and said, you're getting one big 
black eye here. Give this woman back her health insurance. And she got 
it back. But quite a bit later, her cancer had advanced, and it hurt 
her chances for a full recovery. That's called recision.
  Under the Republican proposal, recisions are back. You get sick? Your 
company gets to comb through your life and find out a way not to pay 
your policy. And oh, by the way, if you're sick now and your policy 
lapses at the end of the year, they won't have to renew it because 
they're doing away with that reform, too.
  So we will take away those horrible reforms that the Democrats put on 
the anticompetitive insurance industry--and oh, by the way, the 
insurance industry is exempt from the antitrust law. So the insurance 
industry can and does and has discriminated in these ways. It can and 
does fix prices. Can and does share or divide markets to drive up their 
profits. All of those things are back under the Ryan proposal. Isn't 
that great?
  Now, how is this going to serve seniors? So now, here they are. 
They're going to get a little premium support--that is, the Federal 
Government will not let them have the money; they don't even get a 
voucher so they could just say well, I'm going to go do something on my 
own. They have to buy one of the health care plans that the Republicans 
would dictate they can buy--presumably through an exchange--and they'll 
get a little premium support. The government will give the money 
directly to the insurance company.
  Now, the insurance company can charge them whatever premium they 
want. So this is problematic.
  Now, around here, the Republicans are a little schizophrenic. Some 
days they love the Congressional Budget Office--when it gives them 
results they like. And other days they hate the Congressional Budget 
Office--when it gives them answers they don't like.
  So in this case the Congressional Budget Office looked at it and said 
well, actually, under the Ryan plan,

[[Page 5545]]

seniors who today pay 25 percent of their health care costs in the 
aggregate under the Ryan plan of the future, they will pay 68 percent 
of their health care costs. Guess what that means? That means we are 
back to 1964.
  Now, there's not many people around here old enough to remember '64. 
I certainly wasn't serving here but I know what happened then. Congress 
passed, Lyndon Baines Johnson signed, Medicare. Now one of the 
principal drivers of that was we had a poverty rate for seniors--that 
is, our parents and grandparents--they were at twice the poverty rate 
that they are today because of medical costs.
  Nobody can save enough money to provide for their medical care. And 
if you can't buy insurance--which most seniors can't and couldn't--and 
you get sick, you're bankrupt. You lose everything. And the principal 
thing that drove seniors into poverty and bankruptcy in those days was 
medical costs. So Medicare was established.
  And now the greatest legacy proposed here by Mr. Ryan, the chair of 
the Budget Committee, is to end Medicare. And he's doing this under the 
guise of the path to prosperity. The question is whose prosperity? Not 
the seniors. Perhaps it's the insurance industry.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Thank you very much, Mr. DeFazio.
  I heard you toss out two numbers. One number was the amount of 
medical, the percentage of the costs of medical care that seniors now 
pay. Did you say 28 percent?
  Mr. DeFAZIO. It's about 25 percent on average of all of their medical 
costs, the ones for seniors who are eligible for Medicare.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. If the Republican proposal goes forward, seniors will 
wind up paying how much?
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Sixty-eight percent of their health care costs.

                              {time}  1530

  Mr. GARAMENDI. I see. So we are shifting the costs to the seniors; 
right?
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Right.
  If the gentleman would yield.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Of course.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. We are not going to do anything about the costs of 
medical care or the premiums charged or the egregious practices of the 
insurance industry. We are just going to shift the costs onto future 
seniors. Many of these people, if they are 55 today, they have been 
paying into Social Security and Medicare for 35, 37 years, and now, 
suddenly, oh, sorry, can't have it.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Game's over. You can put that RIP back up.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. If I could, just one other point.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Please.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. The one other thing, since the Republicans seem to want 
to roll back the clock, are they are going to bring back the doughnut 
hole. Now, the doughnut hole is this bizarre construct of the 
Republican prescription drug benefit. Remember, instead of designing a 
low-cost prescription drug benefit that was uniform and available to 
all seniors on Medicare--we could have done that at a very, very low 
cost--the Republicans said let's subsidize the pharmaceutical and 
insurance industries and create a confusing mix of plans, and that's 
what we'll do for seniors. $750 billion over 10 years to subsidize the 
pharmaceutical and insurance industries and give seniors the doughnut 
hole.
  Now, last year we began to close the doughnut hole, and this year the 
pharmaceutical industry has to give discounted prices to seniors in the 
doughnut hole. Mr. Ryan would undo that. No more discounted prices for 
seniors in the doughnut hole. That's eating into the obscene profits of 
the pharmaceutical companies. So they've got a little provision in this 
bill. The doughnut hole is back. Make the world safe for doughnut 
holes. That's the Ryan path to prosperity.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. I don't think so. It seems to me to be the path to 
poverty for seniors. And it goes way, way beyond that.
  Our colleague from Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee, has joined us. Ms. Lee, 
if you would care to comment. I know this is an issue you are deeply 
concerned about.
  Ms. JACKSON LEE of Texas. Well, since, like Peter, I spent 6 or 7 
hours on the floor of the House some years ago, Peter, I guess the 
1990s, when we were fighting against the inevitable doughnut hole, we 
held the vote open--I shouldn't say ``we.'' The Republicans held the 
vote open for at least 6 or 7 hours. I think we voted at 5 a.m. when 
the last arm was twisted. I think someone had a broken arm in order to 
ensure the doughnut hole was in.
  We, of course, have come back, Democrats, and created the Affordable 
Care Act. And I tell you, every senior center I have gone through since 
the famous passage of the Affordable Care Act, seniors have said, 
``Thank you. Thank you.'' If anyone has an 84-year-old mother--I just 
lost my mother, but our conversations centered around the enormous cost 
of prescription drugs and how relieved she was to, at that time, to 
have had some relief from the doughnut hole.
  Now, as we watched our friends just a few, maybe about an hour or so 
ago, I hope there was some camera view of the glee that was shown when 
there was a suggestion that we would shut the government down and, in 
essence, implode, if I can use that on the floor of the House, any 
budgeting conversation that makes sense, such as the fact that what we 
are doing now with the CR is dated and old, it is passe, it is cutting 
into funding for a present year. What it's doing tomorrow, which is 
what the groundwork is being laid, is literally destroying the systems 
as we know it. Sixty-six percent of the seniors don't like this plan.
  But I want to throw something out. Let me let them understand what 
the plan is. The plan is block grants, block grants given to disparate 
State governments, of which we have no control over, to be able to 
manipulate and play with Medicare. What sense does that make? Block 
grants that will in fact be able to be used for whatever we want to 
use.
  The State of Texas, for example, received $3.2 billion in education 
funds through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. Where is it 
my good friend? It is in the rainy day fund, never used for schools. 
Can you imagine block grants for Medicare? Can you imagine the nursing 
homes that will be closed through Medicaid, and then, of course, 
seniors getting Medicare? And then they shout for joy not only for 
shutting down the government over the next 2 days, but they shout for 
joy for the kind of budget that they believe they will be able to--they 
whet their appetite that they will be able to do for 2012. They will 
implode this country as we know it.
  We want budget cuts. We don't want to see the government shut down. 
But there is a morality and a character and an integrity, and there is 
called a heart. And I like what you are saying there. The Republican 
budget would destroy Medicare. And I just want to say this. We have 
been around this block before. I heard one Republican leadership say 
some years ago, ``Over my cold dead body.'' The opposition to my 
President, who was a great hero of Texas, Lyndon Baines Johnson, even 
when he tried Medicare, there were those who said how it would destroy 
America, how it was going to undermine America. And look where we are 
today. How many lives have we saved because seniors had Medicare?
  I see that there is this effort to bury this program that has kept 
the grandmothers and granddads of America's children alive for them to 
be able to see their grandchildren grow up because they have had good 
health care. Where is the morality?
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, we seriously question the morality of the 
proposal that's being put forward by the Republican caucus.
  You said something that I want to focus in on. The details are 
important. We talked about Medicare and the end of Medicare as we know 
it. And basically, as Mr. DeFazio was saying, it's a program in which 
Medicare becomes privatized. The money is turned over to the insurance 
companies; our future, our seniors' future turned over to the insurance 
companies and their whims.
  But you also raised a very, very important point. And that is all 
across

[[Page 5546]]

this Nation there are millions of Americans who are in nursing homes 
who now depend upon the Medicaid program, Medicaid program for the 
payment to the nursing homes. In the budget program, there is the block 
granting of the Medicaid program, and therefore the likelihood that the 
payments to the nursing homes will be reduced or end and those people 
will not be able to get care in the nursing home.

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