Dale Bumpers: “So anyway, Mr. President, the budget resolution calls for a $115 billion cut in Medicare, ostensibly to provide some…”

“So anyway, Mr. President, the budget resolution calls for a $115 billion cut in Medicare, ostensibly to provide some solvency in the Medicare trust fund. The Finance Committee, in my opinion--in my opinion, we should not go forward with this budget and allow the people in this country who depend on Medicare for their very lives, we should not allow them to believe, as they have a perfect right to believe, that we are cutting $115 billion out of Medicare and, make no mistake about it, they will suffer. We say we are going to take it out of providers', hospitals', and doctors' hides. They are going to take it out of the patients' hides and the patients are going to get fewer services. So I do not want to go home and face my constituents and have them say, ``You cut $115 billion out of Medicare, and that's all laudable as long as it goes into the trust fund to make the thing more solvent. But did you do that, did you put this on the deficit?'' ``No.'' ``Did you put it on child health care?'' ``No.'' ``Did you put it into education?'' ``No.'' ``What did you do with it?'' ``We gave it to the wealthiest people in America in tax cuts.'' That is the accusation that every Senator should be prepared to face up to when he goes home this fall and in the election year next year. So what I am saying is, it is a laudable thing to try to make the Medicare trust fund solvent, but what we are doing here is using that $115 billion to provide $135 billion in tax cuts.”