John W. Olver: “the fat is in the fire. Today this House passed, with an almost unanimous vote on the part of the Republican Members, a…”

“the fat is in the fire. Today this House passed, with an almost unanimous vote on the part of the Republican Members, a bill that is going to cut $115 billion out of Medicare, which is going to end up producing lower-quality health care at higher costs for my mother, for all of the Members of this body for their mothers and grandmothers and grandfathers as well. Tomorrow we are going to end up debating the tax bill, which the Republicans paid for today by the cuts in Medicare, and in the process of passing that bill they refused to protect, to renew, to affirm the promise that had been made to our veterans of a lifetime of health care for people who had served in the military services, and that is particularly important for the 12 million or so, or the remainder of the 12 million American veterans of the Second World War. Well, Mr. Speaker, the more things change, the more they are the same. As Yogi Berra once said, deja vu all over again. That is what has happened here. Throughout the 104th Congress, the fight in this House of Representatives and in the Senate was over the massive cuts in medical care for senior citizens that were virtually equivalent to the total amount of the tax cuts that were going to be given, and here we are again, cutting Medicare, and that is rather similar, very similar to the amount of dollars that are needed to pay for the tax cut that comes next.”