Dick Durbin: “I think I have heard some speculation that the Republicans want to cut somewhere in the neighborhood of $350 billion out…”

“I think I have heard some speculation that the Republicans want to cut somewhere in the neighborhood of $350 billion out of Medicare spending, which would mean, of course, that there would either be higher payments by senior citizens, or lower reimbursement to hospitals and doctors and clinics and the like. What I find curious about this is that $350 billion figure is very close to the figure that we hear will be the cost of the tax cut bill, which was part of the Republican Contract With America. So this tax cut that took the money out of the Treasury is obviously being plugged with some cuts in Medicare. Maybe I have missed something here, but the two figures are very similar.”