Tim Ryan: “Medicare Part B is the senior citizen program, the Medicare program that insures our parents and our grandparents. This…”

“Medicare Part B is the senior citizen program, the Medicare program that insures our parents and our grandparents. This is where the Republican Study Committee is going to go to pay for the tax cuts, to pay for the $16 billion in subsidies that they are giving to the oil companies, to pay for the subsidies that they are basically giving to the prescription drugs. They are going to go to our senior citizens and ask them to give up $4.6 billion in 2006 and $84 billion over the course of the next 10 years. These are senior citizens that, as I am sure they are in your district, whose pension is not going up, if they can even keep their pension. Health care costs obviously are going up here, the cost of natural gas and gasoline, heating oil, all of this is affecting how our seniors can actually survive day-to-day; and our friends on the other side are making another wrong decision by going after them and asking them to foot the bill.”