Lloyd Bentsen: “all along, the Republican Medicare plan has been nothing but a shell game to design to hide that they are cutting…”

“all along, the Republican Medicare plan has been nothing but a shell game to design to hide that they are cutting Medicare to pay for tax cuts for the rich. The American people were not fooled, and they quickly caught on that Medicare would have to be cut by $270 billion if the Republicans were not also trying to cut taxes by $245 billion. In fact, $150 billion of the Medicare cuts the Republicans propose having nothing to do with the insolvency proposed in part A, so the Republicans have now introduced a new gimmick: the so-called Medicare lockbox. Each new explanation only makes the Republicans look more and more like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The fact is we have a single Federal budget with a single bottom line. Tax cuts and Medicare expenditures are both part of that bottom line. If you cut taxes by $245 billion, then you have to make up the lost revenues in order to balance the budget by 2002. The Republicans make up that lost revenue by cutting Medicare. To claim that tax cuts are paid for from other cuts is absurd. The lockbox is a sham. Democrats want to fix Medicare as we always have, and the Republicans are not being honest about their intentions to raid Medicare to pay for tax cuts for the rich.”