Karen Bass: “Thank you very much, Mr. Yarmuth, for your leadership in this effort. You know, as a new member on the Budget Committee…”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Yarmuth, for your leadership in this effort. You know, as a new member on the Budget Committee, we had an interesting week last week. We really just completed a week where we saw the far right of the Republican Party take their party off the ledge and way out of the mainstream. They've declared war on seniors, on the disabled, on the sick, on children, and on the underserved by proposing to end Medicare and Medicaid as we know it. They've championed the budget, entitled the Path to Prosperity. This is a plan that simultaneously ends Medicare while giving billions in tax breaks to Big Oil and the wealthiest Americans. Mr. Tonko called it the ``path to ruin''; I thought about the ``Ryan-to- ruin'' plan. It generously gives senior citizens a gift, and that gift is a voucher to purchase health care. The senior citizen then has to identify an insurance carrier that will take the voucher; and if the person is lucky, the voucher will cover all the cost. I do think that this would be rare. And I don't know what happens in this plan if after a couple of years or a couple of illnesses the insurance company decides to drop the person or raise the rates. You know, under the Affordable Care Act, of course, they couldn't do that, but if the Ryan plan does what he wants, he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, so all of that would come back into play. The person would have to pick up the rest of the cost under the Ryan plan.…”