John Garamendi: “One of the things that we have heard all day is about Medicare cuts, somehow the Medicare system is going to be cut. I…”

“One of the things that we have heard all day is about Medicare cuts, somehow the Medicare system is going to be cut. I would like to get into that a little bit because this bill specifically helps Medicare. We have talked about the doughnut hole. This is the prescription drug benefit which, by the way, my Republican colleagues, which I guess are not here at the moment, when the prescription drug benefit part D was put in place, the Republicans controlled this House with the President and they never bothered to pay, never bothered to pay for that benefit. And so you want to know where the deficit came from? It came from there and it came from the two wars that the Bush administration started and didn't bother to pay for either, so we ran up the deficit. But here is the thing for seniors, to go back on my point here, is that the program provides very specific benefits to seniors. It provides $250 this year, a $250 additional benefit for seniors to pay for drugs. Those that fall into the doughnut hole, that doughnut hole begins to close this year, and in 5 years it is totally gone. In addition to that, it is explicit in this legislation that the Medicare benefits will not be reduced.”