Bob Kerrey: “The bill we are debating right now makes a substantial contribution to deficit reduction. The goal of all this…”

“The bill we are debating right now makes a substantial contribution to deficit reduction. The goal of all this deliberation is to balance the budget by the year 2002, the purpose of which is to enable us to continue with an economy that is growing and continue creating jobs and continue the prosperity that we are currently enjoying in the United States. I am saying all this because we will be debating all kinds of reasons why this bill is bad, and I think it is very important for us to begin by saying there is a purpose here. We know Medicare is a very substantial program in terms of cost, and any attempt to balance the budget has to look at this program. Chairman Roth has done, I think, an exceptional job of producing a proposal that not only contributes to deficit reduction, but does a number of other things which I believe are very important. First of all, one of the things this bill does, in addition to contributing to deficit reduction, is there are a number of provisions that Chairman Roth and Senator Moynihan put in this bill that directly affect our capacity in rural America to get good health care.”