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Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2012

Floor Speech

By: Tom Cole
By: Tom Cole
Date: April 14, 2011
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Government Budget and Spending

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Mr. COLE. Mr. Chairman, we've heard it all before. In the 1990s, when Republicans proposed welfare reform, we were told that it was going to lead to poverty and starvation. Instead, it was the most successful poverty reduction program in modern American history. And when we pushed through Medicare part D over the opposition of our opponents, we were told that drug prices would go up and it was an unsustainable program. The reality is it came in 40 percent under cost for both the individual and for the government, something no other health care program has done. The reason why those two programs were successful were flexibility for States, choice, and competition for individuals.

I am proud to support the Ryan budget, the only serious budget proposal that either party has offered. Frankly, it's quite a contrast to what we heard yesterday, which was long on political rhetoric and partisanship by the President and very short on specifics and solutions.

In Medicare, my friends won't tell you that nobody on Medicare is going to have anything other than the programs that they already enjoy, that there is no reduction for seniors in the near term, and that we actually make the changes that are necessary to protect and save the program for the long term. If we stay on the course that they currently advocate, there will be no Medicare for people in their twenties and thirties and forties.

The same thing's true with Medicaid. My friends on the other side of the aisle, frankly, forget that we are not the laboratories for innovation; the States are. We'll provide them with block grants, more flexibilities, more opportunity for change and innovation. We'll end up with a better program that actually protects more people.

So I urge my colleagues to support this budget. We know we're on an unsustainable path. Mr. Ryan has offered us an alternative. Sadly, my friends on the other side of the aisle and the President of the United States have not.

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