Relating to the House Procedures Contained in Section 803 of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003
RELATING TO THE HOUSE PROCEDURES CONTAINED IN SECTION 803 OF THE MEDICARE PRESCRIPTION DRUG, IMPROVEMENT, AND MODERNIZATION ACT OF 2003 -- (House of Representatives - July 24, 2008)
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Mr. DOGGETT. The President offers a very simple Medicare fix: Seniors pay more. Taking a bigger cut from our seniors and our disabled individuals for their drug benefit premiums is hardly a true fix.
You know, down in Texas, Mr. Speaker, we have steers that have been cut. They've been fixed. They've been fixed for all time, and that's the kind of fix that I think these Republicans have in mind for Medicare.
Contrast the President's fix on Medicare this week with the President's veto on Medicare last week. These Republicans are so eager to privatize Medicare, they're willing to spend $1,000 of taxpayers' money every year for every person that they can get to leave traditional Medicare. By our overriding the President's veto, we saved billions of dollars in unnecessary waste. But there are tens of billions of dollars of additional waste right there in the system. And you know what? They deserve a Texas-type fix. They need to be fixed and removed.
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Mr. DOGGETT. The Medicare actuary's own reports show that that this $1,000 waste per person per year that the Republicans insist on, that kind of waste, tens of billions of dollars of waste, does not produce any quantifiable benefit, any quantifiable saving through this failed Republican experiment in privatizing Medicare.
Improving Medicare's finances requires more than a trigger like the President talks about to extend it for a year. We need a willingness to pull the trigger on Medicare waste that these Republicans have plugged in with these unnecessary subsidies that cost more and deliver less.
I say it has something to do with the energy bill, and they're right. These seniors have been drilled by the Republicans for the last 7 1/2 years. Drill here, drill now. These seniors get drilled when they go to the gas station. They get drilled when they go to the grocery store. What this resolution is about is preventing the President from drilling them on their Medicare also.
Let's approve this resolution.
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