Lincoln Chafee: “That is the point that I would like to get across to our listeners and viewers--that it is easy to be critical. It is…”

“That is the point that I would like to get across to our listeners and viewers--that it is easy to be critical. It is easy to say, ``oh, no. Do not fool with that CPI, that Consumer Price Index, and the Medicare figure is too high. We do not like what you have done on welfare. The Republican Governors do not like what you have done totally on welfare an area that has been mentioned before briefly. We make some savings out of Medicare, or actually what we do is we reduce the rate of growth over the next 7 years. Medicare, unless something is done, is truly going to go broke. People say, ``Oh, we have heard you people say that around here on this floor before.'' All right, let us just look and see what has happened. We have two recent reports. The New York Times reported last Tuesday that the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund--which is the fund that pays the hospital bills for the elderly--operated at a loss for the first 6 months of this current fiscal year. It fell short, the outflow as compared to the income, fell $4 billion short in that brief time. So once upon a time we were bringing in more revenue than we were expending and we built up a surplus. Now the lines on the graph have crossed and the expenditures are exceeding the income. That is not going to change unless we do some things. Yesterday's Washington Post reported the Congressional Budget Office now believes the Medicare trust fund will become insolvent in the year 2001.”