Repealing Mandatory Funding for Graduate Medical Education

Floor Speech

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Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this underlying bill.

As the Senate votes this week on the Republican scheme to end Medicare, I am standing up to protect health care for our seniors. Our seniors, they blazed the trail for all of us. They fought the wars, they've earned the money, they've come and made America a great place; and we have inherited what they've done. We have inherited what our senior citizens have made for us. And now we see our Republican colleagues want to end Medicare for these same seniors. To spend nearly $1 trillion on handouts to millionaires not only harms American seniors, but threatens our economic future.

Medicare guarantees a healthy and secure retirement for Americans who pay into it their whole lives, Mr. Chairman. It represents the basic American values of fairness, decency and respect for our seniors that all Americans should cherish.

Last month, our Republican colleagues voted to end Medicare as we know it. According to the Congressional Budget Office--and, Mr. Chairman, that's the office that is bipartisan and calls it straight as they see it--this plan, this Republican plan, would raise seniors' health care costs by more than $6,000 a year--that's a lot of money, Mr. Chairman--more than doubling their costs. Instead of fulfilling a promise to our seniors, a promise that the people who gave everything for us would have something in their golden years, the plan would bring about a corporate takeover of our health care. Insurance company bureaucrats would be able to deny seniors care that they had paid into for their entire lives. The GOP plan no longer guarantees seniors the same level of benefits and choice of a doctor that they have today under Medicare.

Mr. Chairman, this debate is not about the deficit. Only if it were. This debate is about something else, and it is about whether we are going to meet the promises of our seniors, of our children, of our students, of our public employees, or not. It's a choice of whether we're going to put America to work or not. It's a basic choice about how we're going to live together.

Mr. Chairman, this debate is not about a deficit. And as my fellow colleagues pound on this idea that we're broke, we're not broke. What we are is unwilling to do the basics for people who have given America so much. This debate is not about a deficit, because we can reduce the deficit by putting America back to work. Two-thirds of American corporations don't pay any taxes, including General Electric, Bank of America, and others. If we ask people to just do their fair share, America's not broke.

By siding with insurance industry lobbyists to raise Medicare costs only increases the burden on our seniors while doing nothing to address the deficit. As I said, this is not about the deficit.

Raising taxes for 95 percent of Americans to pay for a trillion-dollar tax cut for CEOs who ship American jobs overseas sides with the rich at the expense of the middle class.

Spending billions on handouts for corporate special interests, including $40 billion on Big Oil, only drives up prices at the pump for families who are already hurting the most.

The Progressive Caucus, Mr. Chair, has a plan that puts people's priorities first. Our budget, which we call ``The People's Budget,'' strengthens Medicare and Social Security. It lets Medicare negotiate cheaper drug prices so insurance company bureaucrats can't deny you the medication you need. And it creates jobs by eliminating the deficit by 2021. That's right. The Progressive Caucus eliminates the deficit. That is the fiscally responsible budget. That's a budget that Americans can get behind. Not some budget that rewards the rich at the expense of everybody else and doesn't do anything to end the deficit.

I'll not stand for a vision of America that throws American seniors under the bus. We have a vision of honoring our seniors, honoring those people, the Greatest Generation, the generation that brought us civil rights, women's rights, human rights, the generation that brought us Medicare. We are in a generational fight, Mr. Chairman, and generations in the future will look back on us and ask us why did we let the Republican Caucus take away the basic promises of America, and we will be able to stand now and say, We didn't. We fought them back and we fought for America where everybody does better because everybody does better, including our seniors.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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