April 24, 1997

• There is not going to be any good news in today's report. The question is how bad the bad news is going to be.
• CBO has said the trust fund will be broke in 2001 - that it ran a deficit for the first time last year and will run a $10 billion deficit this year.
• CBO estimates the Part A trust fund spending will grow 8 percent and amount to $136 billion this year and have only a $115.6 billion balance at year's end.
• The trust fund will be broke in four years at the latest. Even the best news -- incremental improvement -- will leave 38 million seniors without health care at the beginning of the next century. The only question is whether it can survive to the next president.
• This is not about the budget, it is about seniors' health care. If the budget were balanced today, Medicare would still be broke tomorrow.
• This is not a problem, it is a crisis. And it is a crisis bigger than the budget.
• It cannot be solved with politics, demagoguery, or gimmicks as President Clinton has done for the last two years.
• Clinton's Medi-scare, partisan politics and demagoguery may have gotten four more years in the White House, but it has not gotten America's seniors another year for Medicare.
• In fact, it has cost them two years. Two years ago, we passed a plan that would have given us the time to solve this before it became the crisis it is now.
• Clinton vetoed that plan. He did not propose another one. He responded with politics and gimmicks -- the $82 billion transfer of the home health care program from the Part A trust fund to the general taxpayer.
• Now we are out of time. Clinton must propose a real plan -- not a cost-shifting gimmick (Washington Post's word: 3/12/97) that increases the taxpayers' burden without addressing Medicare's problems.
• If we are transferring the program to the taxpayer, how do we justify the payroll tax working people are paying for Medicare? Clinton should just be honest and ask us to abolish the trust fund -- because that is what he is doing piece by piece.
• The home health transfer will not save one cent of Medicare spending.
• If we go the gimmick route, what will be the next one? What Medicare program will Clinton throw overboard next before he begins to fix the sinking ship?
• Medicare's problems will not go away -- they will accelerate as the number of retirees increase.
• There are 38 million seniors waiting for leadership from this President, not another report demonstrating that it has not come.