Tom Coburn: “I want to change the focus of the debate a little bit. Last year the President, in 1999, sent to the Congress his State…”

“I want to change the focus of the debate a little bit. Last year the President, in 1999, sent to the Congress his State of the Union message and budget in which he said we were going to save 60 percent of Social Security. The Congress, led by the Republicans of Congress, said, no, Mr. President we are going to save 100 percent of Social Security. And we did just that. We stopped the raid on Social Security. It is time it look at the other program under which we are stealing money, and that is Medicare. The CBO announced in March that the estimated budget surplus of this country for fiscal 2000 will be $27 billion. It is interesting if we look to see where that money comes from. $23 billion of that made up of excess, Medicare, Part A Trust Fund payments and the interest thereon, is from Medicare. So what we are really saying is this surplus that we have, the vast majority of it, is Medicare Part A Trust Fund, and we are about to spend most of it.”