Bill Clinton: “Well, first of all, I thank you for the way you asked the question, because I do think a lot of Americans think that…”

“Well, first of all, I thank you for the way you asked the question, because I do think a lot of Americans think that it's just bickering and may be just another political fight. But that isn't right. There is an argument in Washington over the fundamental responsibility of our National Government in the area of health care and whether we do have an obligation to preserve Medicare as it has worked for our seniors for the last 30 years and to preserve, through the Medicaid program, a guarantee of health care for the elderly, for the disabled, for poor children and pregnant women. Now, let's talk about the facts on Medicare. On Medicare, we do have to find a way to strengthen the Medicare Trust Fund. I've been saying that for sometime now. But the Republican cuts in Medicare are more than twice as great as are necessary to secure the Medicare Trust Fund well into the next century. What they're doing is a number of things. Let me try to be as specific as I can so you'll understand. They say they want to encourage more seniors to take their Medicare benefits in managed care plans. I'm all for giving people the incentive to do that. But I am against forcing people into managed care plans. If you look at their budget, what they do is, they charge elderly people much more, not just in premiums but in copays and deductibles, to stay in Medicare. And they fund the traditional Medicare program at such a lower level that they're going to wind up trying to force seniors to pay more for less medical care in managed care plans. And the way the plan is now drafted, it is actually toughest on the oldest, the poorest, and the sickest seniors in the country. It is unconscionable, and it is wrong. If you look at the Medicaid program, what they do is to cut the Medicaid program so much and to put the States under so much pressure, especially a State like Florida, that we think it is clear that millions of people will lose Medicaid coverage, hundreds of thousands of seniors who now get Medicaid help to stay in nursing homes would be denied it, millions of poor children will lose their coverage, and we will have, in a State like Florida especially, where you have a lot of poor children needing Medicaid coverage and a lot of seniors who are entitled to it, an unbearable burden placed on the States and a lot of human suffering. And it is unnecessary to balance the budget. So I guess the facts in short are, number one, we need to save the Medicare Trust Fund, but they're doing too much and it's going to hurt too much and it's going to really turn Medicare as we know it into a second-class system. Number two, the Medicaid program would be devastated. And number three, and this is the most important thing of all, it is not necessary to do this to balance the budget. I just want to remind the Democrats there that we cut the deficit in half in 3 years with only Democratic votes. We didn't get a single, solitary Republican vote in the Congress to do it. When we passed our program in 1993, they said it wouldn't reduce the deficit; they said it would bring on a recession. And they were wrong. They were wrong. The Republicans say they're against big Government. I want to remind you of something else. Since I've been in office, we're reduced the size of the Federal Government by 200,000. It's now the smallest it's been since John Kennedy was President, and as a percentage of our civilian work force, it's the smallest it's been since 1933. The Democrats did that. We did it by treating our Federal employees humanely, giving them good retirement and severance packages. We did it by increasing the productivity of the fine Federal employees that are left. We reduced the burden of big Government. We're eliminating 16,000 pages of Federal regulation. Those were Democratic reforms. This is not about the problems of big Government. They want to strip the National Government of its ability to protect and advance the interests of the elderly and the children and the disabled people of this country. That is what is going on here. [Another participant asked what the President had done to give children a better education and a brighter future.]”