[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 7198-7199]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                MEDICARE

  (Mr. YARMUTH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, this past Tuesday, 41 House Republicans 
sent a letter to President Obama pleading with him to stop the 
criticism of the GOP's plan to turn Medicare into a private voucher 
system--a system that would cost future seniors thousands of dollars 
each year. Let bygones be bygones, these Republicans said. Let's wipe 
the slate clean. Well, I can't help but laugh at the irony.
  Last year, in districts all throughout the country, Republican 
candidates for Congress attacked Democrats for supporting the 
Affordable Care Act, claiming it cut $500 billion from Medicare--
wrongly, I might add.
  Fast forward 1 year later, and those same Republicans now in Congress 
just a few weeks ago voted for a budget that actually embraces the very 
same $500 billion in savings we found in Medicare in the Affordable 
Care Act.
  There's a difference, though. In the health care law, Democrats took 
that $500 billion and reinvested it in Medicare to increase the life of 
the program for more than a decade. What did the Republicans do? They 
take that $500 billion and use it to pay for more tax cuts for the 
wealthiest Americans and giant oil companies. And Medicare? They 
dismantle it, forcing future seniors into a new system that will 
require them to pay upwards of $180,000 more for their care.
  The American people will not let them forget.

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