Greg Ganske

If I may interject, am I not correct in that, I believe it was in 1992, President Clinton, at that time running for office, made a statement very, very close to Speaker Gingrich, where he basically said the Health Care Financing…

If that is a given and the opposition criticizes our plan, then does the opposition not have a responsibility to offer their plans? Some of the moderate and conservation Democrats on the other side of the aisle did offer a plan. The fact…

I think we ought to emphasize this: In order to achieve those savings, we cannot just leave the program exactly as it is, because in the current program there are areas of waste, fraud, and abuse that administration, there are a number of…

If I may jump in here, many would criticize our specific plans, either to balance the budget or to reform and preserve and protect Medicare. I am sure that there are some things in all of those areas that the gentleman and I might prefer…

Let us talk about the next myth. The next myth is Congress' budget makes draconian cuts in welfare funding. I think I have heard that word draconian about a thousand times in the last 3 weeks. Well, how much did we spend on welfare in the…

Myth: Congress' budget guts student loans. What is the fact? The fact is that in 1995 we spent $24 billion; in 1996 we spend $26 billion; in 1997, $28 billion; 1998, $30 billion; 1999, $32 billion; in the year 2000, $33 billion; the year…

In the last 7 years we spent $492 billion. We propose in our budget spending $878 billion. That is an increase, folks, of $386 billion in welfare spending.

If we go from 492 to 878, I do not know anyone in my district that calls that a decrease.

What is the fact? What are the numbers in the last 7 years we spent? $926 billion. And we propose spending $1,600 billion in the next 7 years.

And I would just like to point out some of the facts versus the myths that we have heard so much of over the last several weeks. The first myth is this: Congress' budget is cutting Medicare spending.

Some people will say, oh, that is just economics. But those are economics that affect real people. I have a lot of farmers in my district. They run expensive farm operations. It costs a lot to run a farm these days. Most of them do not…

And I personally think that that would be the time then that we should bring the Federal employees back. I think it should be noted, though, that I am not saying that the President has to agree with our plan. I am not saying we have to…

One thing should be known, and that is that, at least in my district, there is a Federal credit union that is open and available to provide interest free loans to Federal employees if things are pretty tight. I certainly would like to get…

One of the provisions in our plan says that if a Medicare beneficiary identifies an area of fraud or abuse, that they can participate in recovering some of the cost.

Particularly in urban areas, and this is a situation where everyone in my counties are paying exactly the same Medicare tax as everyone in the other counties that are getting more than twice as much per beneficiary. That is why, for…

County by county. Every county in the country has a rate determined by the Health Care Financing Administration, by Medicare. Unfortunately, the difference between some counties and other counties is huge. Let me give you an example. This…

Exactly. And that has been a flawed funding formula based on over-utilization in certain areas.

But still allowing 7.2 percent growth each year on the average. Remember when President Clinton and Mrs. Clinton presented their plan just a year and a half ago, they proposed an increase of about 6.8 percent. At that time they said that…

I think if he would finally put a plan on the table that the CBO scored as balanced, it does not matter what is in it. He can put his priorities in it. It would be a sign of good faith with Congress, if the President is truly interested in…

We had to work with the assumptions that they gave us, just like we would expect the President to work with the CBO on their assumptions.

The gentleman is on the Committee on the Budget, and he very well knows that when Congress passes budgets, we certainly did not get every economic prediction that we wanted to from the Congressional Budget Office.

I think people back home get all mixed up when we are talking about CBO, Congressional Budget Office, or OMB, Office of Management and Budget. That is the administration's predictors of economics. But I try to explain it to them this way…

If I would help the budget negotiations, I would bring the DeSoto to Washington and drive it down to the White House.

Yesterday was a beginning. We ended Congress' special exemption from the laws that they have passed for others. We reduced committees and subcommittees and committee staff. We determined that budgets should be done with zero baselines…