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[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 80 (Monday, May 15, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H4932-H4934]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                 BROKEN PROMISES TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] is recognized for 60 
minutes as the minority whip.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon to express my deep 
concern over the proposed Republican budget cuts in Social Security and 
in Medicare and Medicaid. What is quite disturbing to me about these 
cuts is that they are broken promises to the American people, to our 
seniors who have labored so hard in this country to provide for this 
great Nation of ours, and what is equally disturbing about these cuts, 
which will cost the seniors, the Medicare cuts, will cost the seniors 
in the year 2002, 7 years from now, $1,000 a year.
  What is additionally so disturbing is that in the same budget 
proposal are tax cuts for the wealthiest people in our society. Over 50 
percent of the tax cuts; it is a $100 billion tax cut over 10 years, 
over 50 percent of those tax cuts go to people making over $100,000 a 
year.
  There is something called the alternative minimum tax, and for those 
of you who are not familiar with that, back in the early 1980's we 
found that major corporations, in fact, 130 of the top 250 corporations 
in America, were paying no taxes at all between 1981 and 1985, during 
at least 1 year, no taxes. And it was, the rest, the burden was picked 
up by everyone else. So we decided to change that law. Even Ronald 
Reagan agreed that it was embarrassing, and it was an outrage. We 
changed the law that required major corporations to pay at least 
something, a minimal tax.
  Well, under the tax proposal we passed last month under the Contract 
With America, the Republicans got rid of that minimum tax, and now we 
are back to where we were, where we will have major corporations not 
contributing their fair share to the tax burden on the American people. 
So what you have in this tax bill is getting rid of the alternative 
minimum tax, you have got 50 percent of the benefits going to the top 
virtually 1 percent, so if you are making $230,000 a year, you are 
going to get $11,000 in tax breaks.
  We think the tax cut is weighted very too heavily to benefit the 
wealthiest people in our society. And to give you an example of that, I 
should talk to you about one provision we had on the floor about a 
month and a half ago that would allow billionaires in our society, and 
millionaires, very few billionaires, but there are some, to avoid 
paying taxes if they renounce their American citizenship. We tried to 
close that loophole on the floor of the House. Republicans defended it 
all. All but 5 Republicans voted to keep that loophole for the 
wealthiest people in our society. You might say. ``Well who does 
that?'' About 24 people. You know what the cost to us as a country is 
over 10 years as lost revenue because of that? $3.6 billion.
  So they have got this tax bill that benefits primarily the wealthiest 
people in our society, and they have got this budget bill that will hit 
the most vulnerable people in our society, our young people and our 
older people, and when it comes to Medicare, they take a giant whack 
out of the disposable income of our senior citizens.
  Let me just tell you exactly what they do. The Republicans in 
Congress are proposing a new budget that will mean serious cuts. It 
will even cut back COLA increases. Over the next 7 years, Medicare will 
be cut by 25 percent. Medicaid, which provides the only long-term care 
many seniors now have access to at all, will be cut by 30 percent. 
Social Security COLA's will be cut by 0.6 percent a year starting in 
1999. For the average senior citizen, this will mean higher out-of-
pocket expenses, fewer benefits, less choice of doctors. It will mean 
higher Medicare premiums, higher deductibles, higher copayments.
  By the year 2002, Medicare costs will increase over $1,000, as I 
said, for every senior citizen. Social security COLA's will be $240 
less for every senior. Cuts in Medicaid will mean 2.9 million Americans 
will lose long-term care.
  When we talk about Medicaid, it is not only the poor in this country, 
but we are talking about a program that provides, I believe, about 40 
percent of long-term care for our seniors in this country. 2.9 million 
Americans will lose long-term care, and these cuts will not pay for 
fixing the Medicare system. Instead they will go into a tax package 
that provides tax breaks for the wealthiest people in the country and 
allows some of our wealthiest corporations, as I said, to pay no tax at 
all. That is not fair. It is not right. It is a broken promise to the 
American people.
  These cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are not just 
going to affect senior citizens. Now, how is the average working family 
going to pay for additional costs of caring for their parents and 
grandparents? How will they pay for the rising costs of long-term care, 
prescription drugs, home health care, and hospital bills? How are the 
middle-aged children of these elderly people in our society, how are 
they going to maintain these increased costs for their parents and 
their grandparents? And if they have kids who may want to move up in 
our society through the education system and get a college education 
and if their kids are on student loans, those kids, in fact, will, in 
fact, be hit hard because under the same budget proposal the costs of a 
student going to college who is on student loans now, we call them 
Stafford loans, but they are better known as student loans around the 
country, in Michigan, that student will pay an extra $4,000.
                              {time}  1315

  So, they are getting squeezed on each end. If you got kids, and you 
got elderly parents, you are going to get hit on both ends.
  Mr. Speaker, it was 50 years ago last week that Americans defeated 
Nazi Germany in World War II, and all over America we celebrated that 
day by remembering the brave men and women on both the battlefront and 
the home front who led our country to victory, and, looking at pictures 
of our parents and our grandparents from back then, they were so young, 
and they were so full of life, it is hard to believe that they would 
ever grow old. But they have, Mr. Speaker.
  The generation that beat Hitler, built our economy, raised our 
families, are now America's senior citizens, and today many of them are 
living on fixed incomes. Their Social Security is the only thing many 
older Americans have each month to pay their rent, to pay their heating 
bills, to pay for their food, for medicine and doctor bills, and for 
most of them it is not easy. They have to struggle to make ends meet. 
Those of us who go home each weekend in our district meet them 
constantly. We know of the struggle they have to go through.
  But today, instead of trying to make life easier and more fulfilling 
for them, Mr. Speaker, Republicans in Congress are trying to make their 
lives harder. In their budget proposal House Republicans have not only 
proposed cutting Social Security by $240 a person, they are also asking 
every senior to pay an additional $3,500 for Medicare.
  Now, as I have said, Medicare, of course, is the system we have in 
this country for health insurance for our senior citizens. We did not 
have that before 1965. You did not have Medicare, and, as a result, 
many seniors, when they got into their senior years, had no health 
insurance and fell directly into poverty. Social Security adopted by 
Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, in 1935; Medicare, adopted in the 
administration of a Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, and a 
Democratic Congress; changed the lives of tens of millions of American 
seniors and kept them out of poverty in their senior years.
  After sending out press releases after press releases bragging about 
how they were going to leave Social Security and Medicare alone, House 
Republicans have broken that promise, and they have targeted our 
seniors, and the worst part, Mr. Speaker, they are not 
[[Page H4933]] being asked to sacrifice to balance the budget, or to 
cut the deficit, or to make the Medicare system even stronger. The 
Republicans, as I said, are cutting Medicare and Social Security for 
one reason and one reason only, to pay for tax breaks, over 50 percent 
of which go to the wealthiest people in our society. And if you look at 
the numbers, they nearly match up. Their Medicare cuts equaled the tax 
breaks, what the Wall Street Journal called the biggest tax bonanza in 
years for the upper-income Americans. It is not me saying it, but the 
Wall Street Journal. The voice of the wealthy in this country said it 
was the biggest tax savings bonanza in years for upper-income 
Americans, and, under the Republican plan, we are going to take more 
money from seniors whose average income is $17,000 a year so we can 
give a $20,000 tax break to families earning over $250,000 a year.
  Does that sound fair to you? Is that what this country is all about? 
Is that what this last election was all about? Is that what our parents 
fought for and sacrificed for in the greatest battle for democracy in 
human decency that the world has even seen? I do not think so.
  Last week the New York Times revealed in an article by Robert Pear, 
in a confidential memo, something that every American should read. It 
was circulated. This memo was circulating among House Republicans, a 
memo detailing where some of these Medicare cuts will come from. Among 
other things, it recommended doubling the annual deductible, increasing 
the monthly premium by 50 percent, charging patients for a portion of 
home health care, and the list goes on, and on, and on, and this just 
does not affect seniors. You know, as I said earlier, where is the 
average working family going to come up with the money to pay for this?
  Well, Mr. Speaker, in the past week we have seen Republican after 
Republican come to this floor and try to convince us that nobody is 
going to be hurt by these cuts, and they bring out charts, and they 
throw numbers around, and they talk about limiting growth on projected 
spending, and they try to tell us how a cut really is not a cut.
  But, you know, none of this Washington bureaucratic talk means much 
to a constituent of mine, Iris Doyle who I have known for a long time. 
Iris Doyle is a proud senior citizen who lives in my district. For 16 
years she taught a class on U.S. citizenship. She literally spent her 
life helping people gain access to the American dream, and to this day 
she still has a framed copy of the Declaration of Independence hanging 
on her wall. But the times have not been easy for Iris. Eleven years 
ago her husband died, 3 years after that her only son died, and during 
the time of their illnesses she was sick herself; she had cancer. For 
18 months she endured chemotherapy treatment after chemotherapy, and 
she says, ``Thank god. Thanks to the wonders of modern medicine the 
cancer is in remission.''
  In order to pay off their hospital bills which totaled over $12,000, 
she literally had to sell her house. Then more bad luck hit. She came 
down with Legionnaire disease which forced her to stop working. Today 
she lives on a monthly Social Security check totaling about $550, and a 
small school pension kicks in in another 134 months. Out of that small 
amount of money she has to pay for everything, rent, and food, and 
medicine, and heat, and transportation, and clothing, as well as her 
medical bills which thankfully, are not as high as they could be. Now 
twice a year she sees an oncologist for cancer, but
 Medicare does not cover the cost of the visit because she does not 
quite meet the annual deductible. So her oncologist let her set a 
payment plan. Every 6 months she pays about a $75 bill. And you know 
what? She struggles to make that payment.

  Now you tell Iris these Medicare cuts are not going hurt anybody. 
Tell Iris that a 50-percent increase in Medicare premiums is nothing. 
Tell her that she can afford these cuts. Because, if you do, she will 
probably tell you what she told me. She said, ``You know, David, it's 
unfortunate that when you get in the later years of your life, when 
you've taught kids, and you have to worry about things like this, but I 
don't think those people in Washington know what they're doing to 
people,'' and then she said, ``I don't think they care.''
  Mr. Speaker, I think she is right. I do not think my friends, many of 
my friends in this institution, realize what these cuts are going to do 
to these people, particularly my friends on the other side of the 
aisle. But I do know one thing. This is not what the American people 
voted for last November. We did not vote to cut Medicare in order to 
pay for tax breaks for the privileged few. Our parents and our 
grandparents stood by America in times of war and peace, and we must 
stand by them today. That is the sacred promise that we made on 
Medicare, and I believe it is time we lived up to that promise.
  We will be engaged in a very vociferous debate for the remainder of 
this week, and I daresay for the remainder of this Congress, on this 
very issue. The cuts that have been put forward by the Republicans in 
the House, in the Senate, will devastate millions of people in this 
country, not only seniors, but their children who must care for them in 
their later years. This is an unconscionable act in light of the 
outrageously inappropriate, unfair, unequal tax cut that the 
Republicans have put forward for the wealthiest few in our society.
  I do not know how to get this message across to the American people 
except to talk to them at home and to talk to them on the floor of the 
House of Representatives. There was an interesting piece today in the 
Washington Post on the front page about how a large majority of people 
in this country today do not read the newspaper, do not watch the 
national news, and only pick up their news from talk radio and, 
occasionally, from tabloid television, and so in many instances miss 
the news, and those are the very people that will be hurt by what the 
Republicans are trying to do to Social Security, to Medicare, and to 
Medicaid.
  Now I can only say to my colleagues that this is in my almost 20 
years in this institution, or 19 years in this institution and 4 years 
as an elected official in Michigan, the most inequitable and the most 
egregions acts of unkindness in terms of a budget that I have ever 
seen. I assume people will become outraged. I know the AARP issued a 
report on Friday detailing the effects of these cuts. I know the 
Hospital Association is concerned because what there cuts really mean 
in addition is that many of our hospitals are going to close around the 
country.
  I know our seniors are going to be concerned because, if they have a 
doctor that they like to go to, basically what this plan does is move 
them into a managed care system where they will not have the choice of 
the doctor they want unless they pay an even higher premium that I have 
quoted on the floor this afternoon. So, you are losing choice of 
doctor, you are paying more out of your pocket, all in order to save 
$300 billion over 7 years, $300 billion that will be used to pay for 
this tax cut that will go to the wealthiest people in our society.
  I do not think I have seen in my years of public service anything as 
bold and as inequitable as this tradeoff. It is right there for 
everyone to see, and people will have to make up their minds whether 
this is what they had in mind when they voted on November 8, 1994.
  The American family is squeezed today. Since 1979, 98 percent of all 
new income growth in the country went to the top 20 percent of 
households in America. The other 80 percent stayed even or went down, 
and most of them went down. We are seeing a bifurcation in our society 
today of wealth and people who cannot make it, and it is tearing this 
country apart, and it is having more of an effect on this Nation than 
just pure buying power or economics.
                              {time}  1330

  It is making people lose faith in the system. It is making people 
feel hopeless. It is what drives gangs to violence in inner cities and 
militias to violence in rural areas. We have to get back to the time in 
our country and our society and in this institution where there is some 
basis of equity and fairness and justice. The rich cannot have it all, 
and that is the direction we are going. This latest assault on seniors 
is a rollback not only of the New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt or the 
Fair Deal of Harry Truman or the programs of the Great 
[[Page H4934]] Society of Lyndon Johnson, it is a rollback to the days 
when we were indeed a society of extreme wealth and people struggling 
to make ends meet.
  We bridged a lot of that gap. We made America a place of promise for 
virtually 80 percent of our population after the Second World War. And 
this latest budget is a rollback.
  So I would say to my senior friends particularly who are watching, 
but also to my friends and colleagues from the country who approximate 
my age, 50, that these cuts will take a terrible, terrible toll, a 
psychological toll, a financial toll, and a spiritual toll, on the 
Nation.
  I urge my colleagues in this body to reject this budget when we vote 
on it on Thursday of this week. Send it back to the Committee on the 
Budget. Let us have hearings on it. This was rolled out at midnight, by 
the way. Nobody saw it. Democrats did not see this until 1 o'clock in 
the morning, and they rolled it out a few days later on votes.
  The American people need to see what is in this budget, and when they 
get a load of what has happened, to students, to our seniors, to Social 
Security. There was a promise made by the Speaker, Mr. Gingrich, 
sitting up directly behind me, that they would not touch Social 
Security, and they have. They have cut COLA's, and it will affect every 
senior in this country hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.
  They said they would not monkey with Medicare, but they have. They 
have. It should not be surprising that they have. The majority leader, 
Mr. Armey, when he first ran for Congress, ran against Social Security. 
He does not really think we ought to have it, he thinks we can devise a 
better system, we should get rid of it. Back in 1986, Speaker Gingrich 
hedged Medicare and the payments on Medicare against additional defense 
spending.
  There are no friends of Social Security or Medicare, or few friends, 
I should say, on this side of the aisle. There are some. I do not mean 
to impugn the motives and actions of all of the Members on the 
Republican side of the aisle, because there are some who do care for 
these. But, for the most part, they will be voting in lockstep on 
Thursday to implement these cuts.
  So I would just like to conclude, Mr. Speaker, by urging each and 
every one of my colleagues to look at the Robert Pear piece in the New 
York Times which outlines the memo that talks about the additional cuts 
in Social Security, the additional deductibles on Medicare, the 
additional premium increases, and also to look at the AARP report with 
respect to the same issue.
  One final comment on choice, because I know it is so important, 
because so many of our seniors rely on a certain doctor for their care. 
They have confidence in that doctor. They should know that with this 
new system that we are about to embark on, if it becomes law, that 
choice will be taken away. Or you can keep it if you want, but you are 
going to have to pay an even higher premium, an even higher premium 
than I have talked about here on the floor this afternoon.

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