John Spratt: “Mr. Chairman, we are headed down the same road we were in 1995: Cut services for the elderly and the poor and give tax…”

“Mr. Chairman, we are headed down the same road we were in 1995: Cut services for the elderly and the poor and give tax breaks to the rich. Let me take one specific. When we went into the Committee on the Budget we said, give us the specifics. They would not. But if we look in the budget document they put out, there is $10 billion in cuts in Medicare. Now, we start talking about that. There is $12 billion cuts in Medicaid. That is $22 billion of the $100 billion in tax cuts coming right out of health care. That is out of the same place that we took $115 billion last year in Medicare and untold billions also out of Medicaid. So they are going right back to the same well. Now they got nervous about that and last night about 9:30 or 10 o'clock up in the Committee on Rules they said, oh, my goodness, we better get this Medicare stuff out of here. Let us shift it all over into Medicaid or unspecified health care cuts. What are the unspecified health care cuts? The children's plan we put in last year, $16 billion, most of it has not been spent yet, and they are now going to cut $10 billion out of the children's program that they will be on the campaign trail in about three months saying, ``We did this great program for children.'' Meanwhile they are going to gut it with this particular proposal.”