Christopher Shays: “We have had really three main objectives. One is to get our financial house in order and balance the budget. We came…”

“We have had really three main objectives. One is to get our financial house in order and balance the budget. We came forward with a 7-year plan. We actually have real and absolute cuts, absolute cuts in what we call discretionary spending. We were going to spend less in some programs next year than we spent this year, and we spent less this year than we did in the year before. Those are true cuts. But in 50 percent of the budgets, some programs that are very important in Medicare and Medicaid, we are allowing for significant increases in both of those programs. We are just trying to slow the growth. So our first effort is to get our financial house in order and balance the budget. Our second one is to save Medicare from bankruptcy. We are going to learn tomorrow that the Medicare plan fund, the Medicare part A, which was to remain solvent, not bankrupt, remain solvent to the year 2002 and will actually probably become bankrupt maybe in the year 2000, which is 2 years sooner than we thought.”