Pete Stark: “I close by suggesting that I am pleased that my colleagues will be supporting this motion to instruct on a bipartisan…”

“I close by suggesting that I am pleased that my colleagues will be supporting this motion to instruct on a bipartisan basis. Send a strong message to the Senate about our feelings. But I want to warn my colleagues about the future. Any attempt to make Medicare a two-income-level plan, indeed to make it a welfare plan, could put the seniors in the same fate as second class Americans that we will be debating in the next 10 or 20 minutes, because once we allow any Medicare beneficiaries to become in any way suggested that they are welfare beneficiaries, we will see by the attitude that this House directs toward them what could be the sad fate of seniors. So think about it. We must keep Medicare as a broad program in which all seniors participate, and as we change it, and we must do that, we must make sure that it does not become a two-class program, because Members will see the dangers in the future debate on this issue.”