Date: 1996-06-11
Speaker: GENE GREEN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. a lot of people who are here today and Members that are watching in their offices. this is our morning hour that each of us can get up andtalk at this time for 4 minutes on issues that concern us. A lot of us. whetlher you are Republican or Democrat. were concerned last week about the Medicare trustees issuing their report on the status of the Medicare trust fund. The trustees said that if nothing is done. the trust fund will be insolvent in the year 2001. This is a serious problem which the Congress should address in a bipartisan way. However. instead of addressing this shortterm problem of Medicare. because it is a short term. it was addressed in 1993 and extended it. and now we need todo it again. We should have done it in 1995 and now we should do it in 1996. to move the year out from 2001 to 2005 and hopefully 2010. But the. Republican majority continue to insist that the way to do that is to cut Medicare trust funds and yet at the same time provide even more money in tax cuts. Again this year the numbers have gone down. In 1995 we were looking at $270 billion cuts in Medicare and $245 billion in tax cuts. Well. this year it has gone down to where we want to cut $168 billion in Medicare over 6 years and provide another $176 billion in. tax cuts. The cuts in Medicare are the cuts in the expected growth. The reason that is hard. I know a lot of times people listen and say. "Well. its not really a cut in Medicare." and it is not. There is a growth in Medicare. But we have to have the expected growth in Medicare because there are more seniors growing into Medicare every day and if we just match inflation. then we are going behind and the people who are there now. the 70yearolds. the 80yearolds who are on Medicare are going to see a cut in the services they have. That is why it Is a cut in Medicare even though it is a cut in the growth. But again we need to deal with Medicare and not talk about the tax cuts because they are irresponsible. There is no free lunch. We learned that in the 1980s when Congress passed tax cut after tax cut and yet increased spending. You cannot cut taxes and increase spending. That is what they are looking for. There is no pa!nfree that you can dn. But they have conveniently forgot that the last time Congress did this in the 1980s with a Republican President and Democratic Congresses. that is why we now have a $5 trillion debt. and that is why it needs to be dealt with. But that was not done just by Democrats. In fact the last balanced budget we had in this country was in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam war and also at the height of the Great Society. So do not let anyone tell you that the Great Society causes debt. It is Congress not being able to control its expenditures on a yearly basis. We are still living with these consequences of the 1980s. Now we have the summer movie season. For a year and a half the Republicans have been trying to write a sequel to the supplyside deficit from the 1980s. We .call that "The Original." In Congress they offered the tax cuts and told the public we would grow ourselves out of deficits and into prosperity. In the sequel low we are seeing they want to offset their tax cuts with Medicare cuts. Unfortunately for the American people the sequels are rarely as good as the original and that is what worries me. One of the other ways that they talk about preserving Medicare is medical savings accounts. Again we are considering a bill today for health care for everyone and hopefully we would have a health care reform bill. But it is going to die on the cross of the medical savings accounts and that is what is frustrating. because medical savings accounts. I can go out now or any individual can go out and buy a high deductible insurance policy now that says. "OK. Ill pay my first $5.000." The problem is that the Republicans and medical savings accounts want to give that $5.000 as a deductible on their taxes. This is the same Congress in the 1980s that removed the tax deductions for average individuals for buying regular medical care policies. If we are going to do it for the rich. then we need to do it for everyone who buys any type of health care policy. Let us make all health care premiums deductible and not just those for the rich.