Chuck Grassley: “reserving the right to object, I have a counteroffer. But before I get to that, I want to say, first of all, it is not…”

“reserving the right to object, I have a counteroffer. But before I get to that, I want to say, first of all, it is not easy for me to stand here and object to something the Senator from Maryland wants to bring up, because he is a gentleman in the 100 percent way in the U.S. Senate. So it is not easy to go against his ideas. But I want you to know, I have been working on the this with Representative Burgess, the leader in the House of Representatives, and we offered four amendments to him. In the negotiations, he agreed to two of them, and two of them he didn't agree to. And we agreed not to push for that amendment. So we felt that we had good discussions with Representative Burgess. But now we are working on the House bill here, and none of those things that Burgess agreed to could be. So where we are is that, even though Burgess agreed to some compromise, Senators over here have issues with preventing Congress from depositing savings into the Medicare Improvement Fund in budget years 11 through 30, based upon CBO estimates of preventing health savings legislation. Now, I have no doubt that preventive medicine saves money, but putting money in a fund for 11 to 30 years out can only lead to what we know happens too often here in the U.S. Senate of budget gimmicks, saying that we are going to use funds in a certain fund.…”