Providing for Consideration of H. Con. Res. 34, Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2012

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank the ranking member.

I'm glad my colleague raised the issue of the bipartisan fiscal commission, because the fiscal commission took a look at the Republican budget plan and said it was not balanced and not comprehensive and not a way to achieve deficit reduction in a responsible way. That was the verdict of the bipartisan commission.

Why did they say it was unbalanced? Because the Republican budget provides big tax breaks for special interests. You don't get rid of the subsidies to the big oil companies. You want to give additional tax breaks to the very wealthy, including millionaires. And what do you do for the tradeoff? You cut funding for education for kids and you do end the Medicare guarantee. We're going to have time to talk about other parts of the bill later on, but I want to talk about that now because it's going to be the subject of the previous question.

What this budget does is say to seniors, you no longer may stay in the Medicare program today; you have to go into the private insurance market. And the way it saves money is it says, as those costs in the private insurance market continue to go up, you are not going to get premium support that will keep up with it. You're going to get something that's a relatively fixed value compared to the rapidly rising health care costs, which is why, as the President said yesterday, in the year 2022 seniors would pay more under the Republican budget plan by over $6,300 than they do under current Medicare. And that continues to rise and rise and rise.

I want to put an end today to this other talking point we keep hearing, that somehow they're offering seniors what Members of Congress have. It's not true. What Members of Congress have is something called a fair share formula under the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan. So as premiums go up, the risk to Members of Congress and other Federal employees is fixed at a certain percentage. Not true under the Republican Medicare plan. The way it saves money in the out years is in fact to make sure that share between Medicare and the senior is not fixed, that the senior has to pick up more of the cost. That is a fact. And that is how they make money in the out years, by putting it on the backs of seniors, even while they say they're going to bring down the top tax rate by 30 percent for the wealthiest people in this country. That's the kind of choices we're facing here.

The gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko) had an amendment before the Rules Committee on exactly this issue of ending Medicare and the guarantee that it provides in saying you've got to go into the private system.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. His amendment makes the point that if you think this is a good idea, if the Republicans think this is such a good idea, why don't you apply it to veterans? Why don't you apply it to active service personnel? If it is such a great thing, why don't you turn them into voucher premium support--whatever you want--a kind of plan where they have to eat the rising cost of health care?

Members are going to have an opportunity. If you vote ``no'' on the previous question, you will be able to vote to say, let's not turn Medicare into a voucher premium support, let's not end the guarantee, and let's not do that for our military personnel or our veterans either.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. The Democratic alternative says, yes, we should ask the highest income earners, the folks at the top 2 percent, to simply pay the same rate that they paid during the Clinton administration when the economy was roaring and we created 20 million jobs.

That's what the choices are before us, and that's exactly the point you're making. You want to end the Medicare guarantee for seniors at the same time you want to give tax breaks to folks at the very top. That's your choice. You can make it, but we don't think that's the choice the American people want to make.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank the ranking member.

If my colleague would remember, one of the first amendments that was offered was to say let's be serious about the deficit. Let's have shared sacrifice. Let's ask those folks paying over a million dollars to go back to the same tax rates that they were during the Clinton administration and put some of that money to deficit reduction.

We offered other amendments by saying let's let the big oil companies do a little less with the taxpayer subsidies and focus that on higher priorities.

The gentleman asked where the figure was that a senior would have to pay $6,000 more in the year 2022 under the Republican proposal. That is from the CBO letter to the chairman of the Budget Committee where they did their analysis of the long-term impact. It was not a Republican outfit. It was not a Democratic outfit. In fact, the chairman of the committee has made it clear that he has used the CBO baseline for the purpose of his own budget. This is out of a CBO report. And I think we need to take it seriously, because we can all have our own arguments and opinions, but there are certain facts that we can't run away from, and that's one of them.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source