Frank Pallone

Exactly. These were people that could not even afford to pay the $46 that the average person pays now for Medicare part B to pay for their doctor bills. Under the Republican proposal that was considered by this House, and actually passed…

It is amazing to me how the other party, the Republican leadership, keeps trying to talk about these changes in Medicare and these cuts in Medicare as if they do not really have an impact on real people. But they do.

I support tax cuts cuts. We all support tax cuts, but not when they are at the expense of Medicare. We have already witnessed attempts by the Gringrich-Dole Congress over the last 2 years to raid Medicare for tax breaks for the rich…

The other thing, when you were talking about the pensions, I heard a lot about the portability. In the same way we were talking about the health insurance portability in the families first agenda you have the pension portability. A lot of…

I think you are making a good point. The bottom line is we know if you see these cuts in Medicare that the Republican leadership is proposing, it is going to have a negative impact on the health care system in general. In my district, and…

You know, it is sort of ironic because when we started our health care task force, which all three of us are part of, our Democratic health care tax force last year, we established two basic principles. One was that we wanted to get more…

Well, as my colleagues know, the best example I think of that is how they included, the Republican leadership included the provision for Medicare savings accounts. Because as we know, the MSA's is another word for them, I guess, were…

Sure. Ms. DeLAURO. The third largest contributor to the Republican Party, Golden Rule Insurance.

I just wanted to say I am very pleased to see that this Republican bill went down to defeat today and also to see that so many Republicans actually joined with the Democrats in defeating the bill. I think it shows that there is some sense…

I want to devote my 5 minutes to the issue of Medicare...thank God that President Clinton was there and did veto that legislation. The Democrats basically in this Congress have prevented the Republican leadership from devastating Medicare.

I want to say briefly I am so glad he pointed out how the Republican leadership is really trying to gag this whole issue and trying to go after the media and those stations that cover these ads. From the very beginning, and we have the…

And every one of you, I certainly know the gentlewoman from Connecticut and everyone else here, I believe, we were forced, because we could not get a hearing in order to tell the truth about what the Republicans were doing, we were forced…

So you could have a 20 percent copayment and then have this 40 percent out-of-pocket beyond the traditional copayment, which is incredible when you think about it. Who is going to be able to afford that? I mean, very, very few.

I was actually assuming, which I see from the document I have, which is similar to yours from this Physician's Payment Review Commission, I was assuming that that 40 percent included the copayment, but that is actually beyond the copayment.

In my opinion, the reason for that is very simple: Because they want to use the cuts in Medicare for tax breaks for wealthy Americans. They want to be able to use the money for that to achieve whatever their other goals are. It is not…

We are talking about a crime against humanity, genocide. We are talking about a country that made a concerted effort to wipe out a people and a country that has refused to recognize that that occurred.

The way the amendment of the gentleman from Indiana is phrased, we are not just talking about Turkey. We are talking about the general issue of whether or not a country should continue to receive United States aid if it forbids or…

Well, I think, if the gentleman will yield back, the problem is that they are trying to squeeze all of this money out of the budget through the Medicare and the Medicaid programs, and the gentleman from Ohio makes the point that…

In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has clearly indicated that medical savings accounts will actually cost more money to the Federal Government. So if you are talking about trying to save money, that clearly is not the way to go.

But he deserves a fig leaf. He earned a fig leaf and he cannot hide behind it. He cannot hide the fact that Republicans and he have consistently voted against protecting the environment and the health and safety of the American people. On…

Again, she has earned her fig leaf and she cannot hide behind it, because she consistently voted against protecting the environment and the health and safety of the American people on five key votes. The gentlewoman joined with the…

Exactly. That is one of the main points that we are trying to make here tonight and that the gentleman is making very effectively, which is that we cannot be fooled, if you will, by the fact that we are not seeing legislation coming…

Before we are finished with this special order tonight, maybe one of the things we could do is to bring up this memo that was sent out by the Republican leadership that essentially gets right to the point the gentleman is making about…

Exactly. Going back to the gentleman's point on the Safe Drinking Water Act, I am hearing that some in the leadership now are so concerned about their poor record on that statute that they have actually reached out to the Democrats and are…

Let me say, first of all, when you talk about the Safe Drinking Water Act and the efforts to weaken those protections, it is a real problem. We are hearing now that because of the fact that the Republican leadership did some polling, they…