Bob Dole: “last month, the Medicare Board of Trustees issued its annual report. Four members of this committee are appointees of…”

“last month, the Medicare Board of Trustees issued its annual report. Four members of this committee are appointees of President Clinton--three of them currently serve in his Cabinet. The trustees concluded that Medicare will begin to go broke next year, and will be completely bankrupt by the year 2002. If this were to occur, no payments, by law, can be made by Medicare to pay for hospital care or for any other services paid for by the trust fund. Thirty-three million seniors and four million disabled individuals depend on the Medicare Program every year. It is for them, and for those who will follow, that we must commit to preserving, improving, and protecting the Medicare Program. Tuesday, the Speaker of the House and I extended a verbal invitation to President Clinton to sit down with us and to begin working on a bipartisan plan to preserve, improve, and protect Medicare. Judging from the President's actions in the past weeks, and from remarks he delivered earlier yesterday at the White House Conference on Aging, it appears that the President has once again chosen partisanship over leadership. Instead of heeding the advice from his trustees, the President heeded the advice of his political pollsters, using yesterday's speech as an opportunity to engage in scare tactics and to mislead America's seniors. Nevertheless, Speaker Gingrich and I are willing to give the President the benefit of the doubt.…”