Barney Frank: “reclaiming my time, I agree. The gentlewoman has said that the President has also cut Medicare. And I will say for this…”

“reclaiming my time, I agree. The gentlewoman has said that the President has also cut Medicare. And I will say for this purpose, a plague on both the Houses. Yes, the President was wrong and they were wrong. And if they take some comfort that the President was in this regard wronger than them, they are entitled to it. But they were both wrong, and some of us told them so at the time. They collaborated in cutting Medicare to an unreasonable level, and they also collaborated in putting caps on the budget. The gentlewoman is the one who got up and said, vote for this budget, warts and all, i.e., vote for this inadequate, underfunded budget. Because in conference we will not be bound by the pretense of what we did in 1997 made any sense. But they are still hobbled by this philosophical commitment to hating government in general, even though on program after program after program they want to improve government in the particular. It does not work, and that is why we are in this terrible bind.”