The Budget

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we are gathered here on the Senate floor to face a very stark fact; that is, that the House Republican budget would end Medicare as we know it for future generations. The House Republican budget would increase costs for current beneficiaries right away, and the House Republican budget would do real damage to seniors across this country and in my home State of Rhode Island.

With gas prices at near-record highs and unemployment numbers still in double digits, most folks are focused on making ends meet. They deserve a budget that will improve the economic opportunity in our country, balance our budget, and maintain Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs on which so many Americans rely. The House Republican budget fails every one of these tests. It ends Medicare, it lowers taxes for most corporations and the most fortunate, who too often already pay lower tax rates than the average American, all while failing to balance the budget.

The House Budget Committee chairman has claimed that ``our budget makes no changes for those in or near retirement.'' This claim that this budget resolution will not affect Americans who are already retired is simply flatout false. The House budget reopens the Medicare Part D doughnut hole that we closed in the reform bill. That will cost nearly 17,000 Rhode Island seniors, in 2012 alone, nearly $9.5 million out of pocket.

Seniors at the DaVinci Center in Providence, The Meadows in North Smithfield, and so many other places have gone without a cost-of-living adjustment in their Social Security benefits for 2 straight years even as costs have steadily risen at the pharmacy, at the grocery store, and at the gas pump. Taking away their prescription drug assistance, charging them an additional $9.5 million hits them too hard and too soon--in 2012, literally right away.

The Republican budget also ends Medicare as we know it for future generations.

Planning to retire in 11 years? No Medicare. You instead will be forced to buy private health insurance from insurance companies standing between you and your doctors instead of the reliable, affordable insurance provided by Medicare.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated this would double what retirees would pay out of pocket under the current system--more than $6,000 extra for retirees.

The Republican attack on Medicare overlooks a basic fact--that all health care costs are skyrocketing, irrespective of who the insurer is. Recently, Defense Secretary Gates said, ``Everybody knows that we are being eaten alive by health care.'' There is a cost problem in health care, but attacking Medicare fundamentally misdiagnoses the problem. But that is another speech.

I recently held an official Senate Aging Committee hearing at the Johnston Senior Center in Rhode Island to give Rhode Islanders the chance to make their voices heard. Audrey Brett, a Middletown resident who relies on Social Security and Medicare, said this:

For all those Americans who worked, paid their taxes, added to the betterment of the country, served in military and civil service--we cannot let them live and die in poverty. We owe them their final days of security and dignity.

Audrey is right. But the Republican budget gets rid of that promise of security and dignity contained in Medicare. Medicare as we know it is lost. Here is what is protected: low taxes for the superrich, who already pay lower tax rates than the average taxpaying American family--protected; low taxes for many large corporations, which for too long have been gaming the system and paying too little--protected. And remember, the Republicans just voted last week to protect Big Oil tax subsidies.

Wreck Medicare but protect those tax cuts and subsidies. Those are not America's priorities. Let's put real priorities first--Medicare and allowing our seniors to enjoy a stable and dignified retirement.

I see the majority leader on the floor. I yield back the remainder of my time.

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