Pete Stark: “I am proud to answer the question of the gentleman from Colorado, because it is true that Democrats have been concerned…”

“I am proud to answer the question of the gentleman from Colorado, because it is true that Democrats have been concerned about spending. We would like to spend money to see that our parents' Medicare is safe. We would like to spend money to make sure that the checks for Social Security go out each month to those beneficiaries. We would like to spend money to see that teachers can have a reasonable salary. All of those things are purposely being denied in the Republican budget which is driven by this tax cut. The Republicans, for example, ran out of money for next year's Medicare payments and had to go through some blue smoke and mirror accounting tricks to find an extra $20 billion yesterday in the Senate bill because, otherwise, they would have had to dip into 2002's Medicare trust fund by 20 billion bucks to balance the budget. There is no money left for a pharmaceutical benefit unless, of course, we choose to take it out of Medicare and thereby dismantle the Medicare system which, under the former leadership of Speaker Gingrich, was the Republican plan and still remains the operative policy today.”