John Shaw: “I must advise my colleague from Florida that any monies going into the Medicare Trust Fund is replaced with Treasury…”

“I must advise my colleague from Florida that any monies going into the Medicare Trust Fund is replaced with Treasury bills. This is what the gentlewoman is referring to as IOUs. That is what it is under existing law; that is what it would do under this particular bill. If the money is not spent, it is invested in Treasury bills, just as it is today. So I must correct the gentlewoman. We do not have a bucket of cash that sits in there. That money that is coming out of the senior citizen's Social Security check every month and paying the income tax on it, that we are going to give them some relief from, that money goes into the Medicare Trust Fund and is replaced with Treasury bills and comes back into the general fund. Under the Republican plan here, or I should say bipartisan plan because I have already made it known that there are many Democrats who are supporting this type of legislation, it does exactly the same thing.”