Byron Dorgan: “there does need to be opposition, it seems to me, for those of us who believe this is not the right way to use $12…”

“there does need to be opposition, it seems to me, for those of us who believe this is not the right way to use $12 billion. The $12 billion was made available. Twelve billion is what we discovered. The CBO estimate was below the $400 billion available for this program. So the question was: How shall the $12 billion be used? We have spent all of our lives in this Chamber making choices. Too often we make the wrong choices in circumstances such as this. We come back with a plan that says let's use the $12 billion for two purposes, and both of them are for experiments. In both cases, we know the answer to the experiments. One, $6 billion to the insurance companies so we can incentivize--subsidize--the insurance companies to see if they can provide the prescription drug benefit at equivalent or less cost than Medicare does. We know the answer to that. That experiment has been done. Ask senior citizens all across this country what would you rather have, better benefits or lower costs or would you like to have $12 billion in demonstration projects? That is the choice.”