Barney Frank: “the gentleman from Florida claimed inaccurately that Ronald Reagan had a Democratic Congress. In fact, for 6 of the 8…”

“the gentleman from Florida claimed inaccurately that Ronald Reagan had a Democratic Congress. In fact, for 6 of the 8 years under Ronald Reagan, the Senate was Republican, so he was not faced with a Democratic Congress. I would have to say, however, that the gentleman's economics makes his history look good. He says under this tax scheme we will have enough for Medicare to restore it. In fact, that is the heart of what we are talking about. People talk about the money belonging to the people, and of course, it does. People have two sets of needs. They have needs that can best be dealt with individually, but they also have needs that can only be dealt with if we do them together. In my own district, I am often asked about funding for Superfund, for transportation, for law enforcement. All of these are being cut in the President's budget. The President tells people that he cannot afford, under his budget with this tax cut, to provide any help on prescription drugs for people who make more than $17,000 a year. He canceled, because of the need to pay for the tax cut, the Public Housing Drug Elimination program that provides police officers to be in the public housing projects. In fact, we have a terrible crisis in the provision of medical care, nursing homes, and home health care agencies. Hospitals all over the country are in difficulty, and it is getting worse. We underpay the hard-working people in these facilities.…”