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“SAVING MEDICARE” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H10053 on Oct. 13, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
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SAVING MEDICARE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaHood). Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I want to respond to my colleague and friend from the other side of the aisle who just spoke. Teresa McKenna in this picture was arrested because she wanted to speak about the injustices and the inequities and the lack of discussion on the issue that is most important to her and the people that she affiliates with in this country, the Medicare issue.
We have had one hearing on a proposal that will affect 40 million people, and she and other of her colleagues went to the Committee on Commerce to ask to be heard. She asked to be heard. They were told they could not be heard. She asked why, and she was told she could not be heard. Then they were arrested and taken down to the jail.
Now, the gentleman who just spoke talked about this was a left-wing type of an organization. Does she look like some left-wing radical that wants to overthrow this Government? All she wants is a fair shake for herself and her seniors.
Do you know why she wants a fair shake? Because in a report that was done very recently by the Department of Labor, we found that 60 percent of senior citizens in this country, 60 percent, have combined retirement incomes, that is the retirements and their Social Security, of $10,000 a year or less. I will repeat that again for you. We have got 60 percent of our seniors living on $10,000 a year or less in this country.
What the National Council of Senior Citizens do is they go out and help these low-income seniors get low-income jobs so they can have some supplement to that $10,000.
What is going on here is my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have a proposal that will take $270 billion out of Medicare in order to pay for a tax cut which comes out to about $245 billion, which predominantly goes to the wealthiest Americans. Fifty percent of that tax cut goes to people who make over $100,000 a year. That is what this fight is about. It is about the Teresa McKenna's and the people struggling to make ends meet, and who will have $1,000 added to their bills each year. They are living on $10,000 and $13,000, and we are giving tax cuts to the wealthiest corporations and wealthiest individuals in our country.
That is why we are so upset and mad. Do we need to fix Medicare and improve it as we go along? Of course we do. We have been doing that for 30 years. But how do you fix it when the Speaker of the House, as this headline in the Washington Times indicates today, says ``Gingrich places low priority on Medicare crooks. Defends cutting antifraud defenses.'' How do you fix it when you have that type of an attitude running this institution?
Now, let me just say with respect to this issue, not one dime, not one dime of their plan goes back into the Medicare trust fund. Not one dime. The last speaker indicated that the Medicare trustees, the three that he mentioned, Secretaries Rubin, Shalala and Reich, indicated that the trust fund was broke. But they also said it was not broke. They said basically all you need is $90 billion. You don't need $270 billion to fix it.
The other thing I wanted to talk about very briefly is what is happening to Medicaid. We are cutting $182 billion out of Medicaid. What they are doing by cutting this money is they are putting in jeopardy literally hundreds of thousands of seniors from getting nursing home care that they so desperately need and impoverishing spouses in this country by changing the rules and regulations. A $182 billion cut in Medicaid, 60 percent of which, or close to that number, goes to long-term care for our seniors in nursing homes.
Medicaid is not just a program for the poor, it is for seniors. Two out of every five children in this country get health care from Medicaid, and they are cutting it by $182 billion. That will mean 15,000 residents in my State of Michigan will not have nursing home care next year if this cut goes through; 175,000 will not have it over a 7-year period. These are draconian cuts.
The New York Times had a headline saying the Republican Gingrich revolution is rolling back the regulations we put on nursing homes. Remember the time when people were being drugged and straitjacketed to their beds? We had serious home abuses. We changed that with humane regulations. Those are all being rolled back now. This proposal that they have to cut Medicaid also repeals the minimum quality standard for nursing homes and other quality care.
So, in conclusion, Mr. Speaker, let me just say that I hope America is paying attention to these two important issues we will be debating in the next week or so.
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