Lloyd Bentsen: “Mr. Speaker, like my colleagues, and in particular the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, I just returned from my…”

“Mr. Speaker, like my colleagues, and in particular the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, I just returned from my district where I had a number of town meetings with my constituents. We talked about the budget, and we talked about the budget not just being a 1-year budget, but the decisions we might make this year would have implications far beyond the next fiscal year, implications far beyond the next 10 fiscal years. What we are saying with respect to the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, the Medicare Trust Fund, is it is not so simple that we can take that money today and spend it on something else and not have to make it up later. My colleague from Iowa uses the do-not-worry, be-happy defense, that we can add prescription drug benefits using this money, we can modernize Medicare and use this money, and it will all work out in the wash. But the fact is that it will not work out in the wash because the money that you want to use, the trust fund money, is already obligated. It is already obligated to pay Hospital Insurance Trust Fund benefits. Mr. Speaker, we all know that the demand on that money is not declining, it is increasing as America ages.”