[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11677]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     SLASHING MEDICARE AND MEDICAID

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen) for 3 minutes.
  Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. Mr. Speaker, the Republican leadership has taken us 
to the brink of a default crisis by holding the debt ceiling and our 
ability to pay our bills hostage. Their latest slash, burn, and kill 
Medicare and Medicaid bill, otherwise known as Cut, Cap, and Balance, 
is putting the full faith and credit of our Nation at risk and 
threatening critical safety nets for our seniors, people with 
disabilities, and the poor, including our Nation's children.
  Medicare covers over 4 million African Americans, over 4 million 
Latinos, and close to 2 million of other people of color--citizens with 
higher poverty rates who have some of the most serious health problems. 
Our seniors and people with disabilities rely on Medicaid for long-term 
care and there are 9 million dual eligibles, low-income seniors and 
younger persons with disabilities, who are enrolled in and rely on both 
Medicare and Medicaid.

                              {time}  1130

  Nearly three in every four poor or near-poor African Americans and 
Latinos are covered by Medicaid, but 64 percent of low-income black 
children and 63 percent of low-income Latino children are on Medicaid. 
Medicaid also provides critically important support to all Americans 
who lost their jobs as a result of the economic downturn.
  In the Affordable Care Act, the Democrats strengthen Medicaid. And 
contrary to what you hear from our Republican colleagues, we use $500 
million in savings identified in Medicare to strengthen it, to extend 
its solvency, and to begin to close the doughnut hole.
  In this risky standoff, it is clear that Medicare and Medicaid 
payments are at risk, and African Americans and other racial and ethnic 
minorities, and the poor who are already underwater and who rely on 
them for coverage, will bear the overwhelming brunt of the cuts, as 
will the providers and facilities that care for them. This is 
unacceptable. Then the loss of the economic multiplier effect that 
States would experience as a result of Federal Medicaid cuts would be 
even much greater than the amount of the Medicaid cuts themselves.
  We're calling on the Republican leadership to do what we all know 
must be done to release the debt ceiling and all of the people who are 
being held hostage with it, the poor, racial and ethnic minorities who 
we stand here on behalf of today with the Out of Poverty Caucus.
  I quote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, ``Of all the forms of 
inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and 
inhumane.'' We must avert the default crisis. Colleagues, let's lift 
the debt ceiling, let's pay our bills, and let's avoid an economic 
catastrophe that the good people of this country do not deserve and 
cannot withstand.

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