Frank Pallone: “here they go again. My colleagues on the other side, the Republicans, are now talking about how they want to fix…”

“here they go again. My colleagues on the other side, the Republicans, are now talking about how they want to fix Medicare essentially by cutting Medicare and using the money to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy. We had this all through 1995. Now they are trying to distort the information that came out in the New York Times about the Medicare trust fund, to go ahead with their radical plan to cut Medicare in order to pay for these tax breaks for wealthy Americans. Well, let me tell the Members that this trust fund is not broke. We know now that it has $126.1 billion in surplus. This small deficit that was incurred in the first 6 months of this year does not justify going ahead with this radical plan to cut Medicare and give back these tax breaks to wealthy Americans. The Republican leadership has refused to sit down with President Clinton and try to work on a bipartisan basis to come up with an answer for Medicare to make sure it is solvent. We are not talking about today. We are not even talking about the next few years. This insolvency, if it occurs, is I think 2001 or 2002. Do not let it be an excuse on the part of the Republicans to give these tax breaks to wealthy Americans.”