Servicemembers Home Ownership Tax Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I have great concern about the cost of health care for American families. We see it with our seniors certainly, as they will be seeing Medicare cuts. In this bill, there is $464 billion in Medicare cuts, but there are taxes that are going to go up, which will impact all of the people in this country.
I remember a promise the President made. He said his plan would not raise taxes one penny. He went on to say: not your income taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains taxes--any of your taxes.
We are seeing that taxes are going up, and in a way that is basically--you hate to say it, but it is a gimmick in this bill, where they are going to collect taxes for 10 years but only give benefits for 6, and it is the last 6 years.
As my colleague from Texas said, they are going to start collecting taxes--today is December 10--on the 31st of this month, 21 days from now, but the services would not be given for 4 years. That is how they get the number under $1 trillion, and it is at a time when the President makes a statement that this would not add a penny or a dime to the deficit. Eighty percent of the American people don't believe it because they know what is in front of them. They know what it is like to live their own lives. Is this what the Senator from Texas is seeing as well?
Mrs. HUTCHISON. The President said, in his address to the joint session of Congress, that this bill had to come in at a cost of no more than $900 billion. So the CBO scored the bill at $847 billion. But the Senator from Wyoming has brought up a point that is because they started scoring the bill in 2010, but the services in the bill don't start until 2014.
If you take the years from 2010 to 2019, it probably comes in at $847 billion. But if you start when the spending starts and go to 2023, the cost is $2.5 trillion.
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Mr. BARRASSO. You cannot go home and say that with a straight face. There are many rural areas in our States. People see through all this.
There are two articles next to each other in today's New York Times. One talks about the details of the secret agreement they are working on behind closed doors. It says: ``Details Are Scanty.'' Right next to it it talks about: ``For Rural Elderly, Times Are Distinctly Harder.'' These are the people who are going to see taxes going up, these are the people who are going to see cuts in Medicare.
I want to read the first paragraph because this is from Lingle, WY, a community in my State. It talks about Norma Clark, 80. It says:
Norma Clark, 80, slipped on the ice out by the horse corral one afternoon and broke her hip in four places.
I am an orthopedic doctor. I have taken care of these over the years.
Alone, it took her three hours--
These are the kind of wonderful Americans we have--
Alone, it took her 3 hours to drag herself 40 yards back to the house through snow and mud, after she had tied her legs together with rope to stabilize the injury.
This is a person who is on Medicare, and they are going to cut $464 billion from Medicare, and they are going to use gimmicks that are going to harm our people.
I have a former Governor and a former chief of staff for a Governor's office. You know in the rural parts of your community, I say to Governor, now the Senator from Nebraska, you have people like that--hard-working people who expect honesty from a government, and they are not getting it in this bill which is going to tax for 10 years and only give services for 6.
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