John Spratt: “I have long supported VA subvention, and I want to fix the home health care payment formula as much as anybody on the…”

“I have long supported VA subvention, and I want to fix the home health care payment formula as much as anybody on the floor, although I am not sure this bill does much for home health care in my State. I am sure of this, it deals a body blow to the deficit. This bill adds $6.9 billion in new spending over the next 10 years, $6.9 billion. It cuts revenues, reduces tax revenues by $4.9 billion. So it takes a whack of nearly $12 billion out of the budget, out of the surplus over the next 12 years. Ironically, that is because the Roth IRA provision put in here as a "pay for" does save money over the first 5 years, $2.4 billion. But over the second 5 years, over the 10-year course of this bill, it loses nearly $5 billion, $4.9 billion. This is a shortsighted way to pay for the bill. We would be better off to drop the Roth provisions altogether. It would save us a $5 billion hit on the surplus, and we would only have a $7 billion reduction. It is not the way to go if we want to save the surplus for Social Security or protect the fiscal situation that we have worked so hard to get ourselves into.”