On the recordApril 6, 2011
I am so happy to join you. And I thank you for coming down to the floor each week and making the point that we have choices in the United States of America. We can put our people back to work. We can reduce our debt and our deficit, but we don't have to do it on the backs of middle class Americans, and we certainly don't have to do it on the backs of our elderly. That's exactly what the budget proposal by our Republican Budget Chairman Paul Ryan says. He said, look, the country is broke. We've got to just show courage and we've got to cut that deficit--we agree with that--and the way that we think we ought to do it is by ending Medicare as we know it, by abolishing Medicare. Instead of that guaranteed benefit that all older Americans can aspire to now, can get when they're 65 years old, that persons with disabilities would get, they know that it's there--and I cannot imagine that there is not every single Member of this House, Republican or Democrat, where people come in and say, I hope I can make it until I'm 65 and get on Medicare because I can't get insurance, and even if I could, I can't afford it right now or I have a preexisting condition. He wants to do it on the backs of senior citizens. It's been said many times tonight that 700,000 jobs would be lost if H.R.…
