Neil Abercrombie: “I think the reason that the argument starts over Mr. Barbour's offer and then goes off into the ethereal on Medicare is…”

“I think the reason that the argument starts over Mr. Barbour's offer and then goes off into the ethereal on Medicare is that the argument is not about whether or not there is increased amount of money in the Republican proposal or in Mr. Clinton's original proposals, for that matter, but whether or not, given the expansion of the base population that will be in need of Medicare and Medicaid, whether that will be sufficient to cover the basic needs regardless of how much you are able to rein in the overall expenditures on hospitals, nursing homes, pharmaceutical needs, et cetera. That then becomes, if you will, just allow me another 10 or 15 seconds, that then becomes an argument over different economists making projections as to what the need will be vis-a-vis the population of the United States, the aging population of the United States, the requirement in social security benefits as the baby boomers come in and the number of people contributing to it goes down, et cetera, those kinds of things. That gets into the realm of sheer speculation.”