Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I requested that we amend the unanimous consent request and agree to the Pryor amendment by unanimous consent.

Mr. GREGG. I reserve the right to object because I would like to reserve my 15 seconds.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I reserved the 15 seconds because it is easy to respond to the Senator from Iowa and it only takes 15 seconds. Taking money out of the Medicare fund to fund other parts of this bill is a mistake and it is not appropriate.

Mr. GREGG. I thank the Presiding Officer. I yield my 3 seconds. Actually, I yield it to the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I appreciate--although it was with a bit of hyperbole--that the Senator from Montana has made my case. The Medicare trust fund and its recipients will be cut by almost $\1/ 2\ billion in the first 10 years. That money will be taken to fund initiatives that have nothing to do with senior citizens, and it will not benefit them. In the end, it is going to mean the Medicare trust fund is less solvent and less capable of sustaining the benefits seniors deserve. This is the only amendment we will get to vote on that absolutely guarantees the Medicare funds will not be used to fund a new entitlement or the purchase of votes for the purpose of passing this bill or to fund anything else in this bill that isn't tied to the senior citizens' benefits. You can either vote with seniors and protect the Medicare funds for them or you can vote to raid the Medicare fund and spend it on something else. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that during the next hour which we control we be allowed to enter into colloquies on our side of the aisle.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we have certainly heard a lot of talk about Medicare over the last few days, and we have actually even voted on a few amendments, but they have all had no force of law, and they have just been statements of purpose. They are called sense of the Senate. Every one of these sense of the Senate has had as its purpose to try to give political cover to Members on the other side relative to the issue of the fact that this bill reduces Medicare spending by close to $\1/2\ trillion in the first 10 years, $1 trillion when it is fully implemented over a 10-year period, and $2.5 trillion over the first 20 years, and that those reductions in spending in Medicare are going to translate immediately and unquestionably into a reduction in service and coverage for Medicare-recipient senior citizens. The money from that--the $\1/2\ trillion in the first 10 years, the $1 trillion in the 10 years that we are doing the implementation, and the $2.5 trillion over the next 20 years--is being taken out of the senior citizen program called Medicare, and it is going to be moved over into a brandnew entitlement program and into the expansion of Medicaid. Those dollars will be used to create new Federal programs for people who have never paid, for the most part, into the Medicare hospitalization fund; for people who are not senior citizens and therefore do not, arguably, deserve to receive the benefit of the Medicare hospitalization fund. As a result, seniors will see their benefits reduced and other people will get a new benefit through the Federal Government. Ironically, the new benefit, this new entitlement, will not be adequately funded either, but large portions of part of that funding are going to come from the Medicare trust fund. The problem here is that the Medicare trust fund is insolvent. It has $30 trillion of outstanding exposure to the Medicare trust fund, which we don't know how we are going to pay for as seniors retire over the next 20, 30, 40 years. Thus, there will be a reduction in the benefits to Medicare, a reduction to Medicare recipients, a reduction in the Medicare trust fund to the tune of $\1/2\ trillion in the first 10 years, $1 trillion when it is fully implemented, and $2.5 trillion over the next 20 years. That type of reduction shouldn't go to create new Federal programs. If it is going to be done at all, it should go to making the Medicare trust fund more solvent. Well, that has been essentially the tenure of some of the proposals from the other side of the aisle. We have heard a lot of people on the other side of the aisle say: All right, we are not going to cut Medicare. We are not going to cut Medicare. We are just going to reduce it by $\1/2\ trillion, and then we are going to create a new program with it. We are not going to do this to the seniors. We are not going to take their money and start a new program. We have heard that statement in different levels of machinations from the other side of the aisle quite regularly. I do, however, for the record, want to say--because I have immense respect for him, and he has been totally forthcoming on these issues, and very accurate--that the chairman of the Finance Committee has not represented that is what is happening with the Medicare funds. He has represented on the floor that those Medicare funds that are being reduced--those reductions in Medicare spending will go to create a new program. But a lot of folks on the other side have said they don't agree with that, that is not what they are intending to do. Some of the sense of the Senate have clearly had that implication in their passage. So what does that amendment do that I am going to be offering? It shoots real bullets. No longer is it a political statement, a sense of the Senate, a thought process, a virtual event saying you want to protect the Medicare trust funds. This amendment is real. It protects the Medicare trust fund. It is real hard language, which says that if you vote for this amendment, you are voting not to move Medicare trust fund dollars out of the Medicare trust fund, away from Medicare recipients, over to start a new program; that any new program started in this bill must be paid for by something other than Medicare.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional minute.

Mr. GREGG. So this shoots with real bullets. It says, essentially, if you vote for this amendment, you are voting to keep the Medicare dollars with Medicare, not to take those dollars that are being cut out of senior citizen programs and move them to create a brandnew set of programs at the Federal level. This will be the vote that I believe determines whether we raid the Medicare funds for the purpose of creating a new Federal program or whether we maintain the integrity of the Medicare system. This is a serious amendment, and it is a real amendment. There is no sense of the Senate about this. This is enforceable language. Anybody voting against this amendment is formally voting, unquestionably and unequivocally, to take $\1/2\ trillion of Medicare funds, in the first 10 years, and move them over to fund a new program; to take $1 trillion from the Medicare funds, when fully implemented, and move them to fund a new program; to take $2.5 trillion, over the next 20 years, of Medicare benefits that should be going to seniors--because they are Medicare funds and should be benefiting the solvency of the Medicare funds--and moves them to create new programs. Anybody who votes against this amendment is accomplishing that; they are cutting Medicare for the purpose of creating a new program. If you vote for the amendment, to the extent Medicare savings occur, they would not be used to fund new programs. It is a real, enforceable amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GREGG. As usual, the Senator from Wyoming is absolutely true. The sense-of-the-Senate amendments we have had from the other side of the aisle on Medicare are political amendments meant to make a political statement, but they have no substantive effect. That is why I brought forward my amendment which hopefully will be voted on in the next couple of days or so which says specifically what the Senator from Wyoming has asked for. To the extent there are reductions in Medicare spending--and there may need to be some--that those reductions are reserved for the seniors for the benefit of their program and to make Medicare more solvent and no new programs be created on the backs of seniors by cutting Medicare and moving the money from Medicare over to new programs. My amendment is not a sense of the Senate. My amendment is a real amendment. It is the one chance people are going to have to vote for protecting Medicare and not creating new programs with Medicare money. And that is what it is going to be.

Mr. GREGG. Absolutely. It is not exactly the same in the sense that it is real. Theirs is not real. Mine is real. It says you are going to keep the Medicare money to benefit Medicare, and you are not going to use the Medicare money for the purpose of creating new programs which have nothing to do with Medicare for people who are not on Medicare.

Mr. GREGG. To begin with, it is going to be reduced by $460 billion in the first 10 years. In the second 10 years, it will be reduced by $1 trillion. In the full 20-year time, it will be reduced by $3 trillion. All those funds, all those reductions, will go to create a new entitlement for people who are not seniors and who probably have not paid into the HI trust fund, not having paid into the Medicare trust fund, which is an insurance program, in part. As a practical matter, it will take scarce resources out of the Medicare trust fund, which should be used to make the Medicare trust fund more solvent, and move them over to expand the Government in another place. It will mean that we as a government have basically used up some of the resources which we might want to use to make Medicare more solvent because it has $35 trillion of unfunded liability out there, and we will use up those resources to create a new Federal program which will not help us address this outyear insolvency of Medicare. It doubles the problem. First, it does not address the Medicare problems in the future and, second, it creates a brandnew entitlement which will have to be supported forever by Medicare funds, it appears.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up my amendment No. 2942. I see the Senator from Arkansas is standing. I thought I was supposed to offer my amendment first. Is the Senator from Arkansas supposed to go first?

Mr. GREGG. I will reserve.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment of the Senator from Arkansas be set aside so I may call up my amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2942.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, absolutely. I was chairman of the Budget Committee at the time. As the Republican leader is alluding to, we attempted to reduce the rate of growth of Medicaid by $10 billion of a $1 trillion base over 5 years, less than one-tenth of 1 percent, I believe that was. It was opposed aggressively by the AARP, and it was opposed by the other side of the aisle. Not one Member of the other side of the aisle voted for that. Do you know what that change was going to be? It was going to require that wealthy people who benefited from the Part D drug benefit would have to pay part of their premiums rather than getting them all for free. So Warren Buffett, for example, would actually have to contribute to his drug benefit, assuming he is on Part D. Maybe he isn't. Maybe he hasn't opted for it. But as a practical matter it was a very reasonable amendment. Now we are seeing, as the Senator from Arizona has pointed out, a $460 billion cut over the first 10 years of this bill; a $1 trillion cut in Medicare, $3 trillion over the first 20 years of this bill--$3 trillion--when we already know Medicare, according to this chart, is insolvent to the extent of $38 trillion--insolvent. Yet we are going to take this money out of Medicare, as the Senator from Arizona has pointed out, and we are going to fund a brandnew entitlement. We are going to expand Medicaid to 133 percent of poverty with this money, and we are going to create this brandnew entitlement which has nothing to do with Medicare. None of the people who are going to get this benefit probably have ever paid into the hospital trust fund, which is what funds Medicare. That seems totally inconsistent with the purposes of Medicare. Shouldn't Medicare funds benefit Medicare recipients, I would ask the Senator from Arizona or the Republican leader? If there are going to be reductions in Medicare, should it not go to make Medicare more solvent and not to create a new entitlement?

Mr. GREGG. I was wondering if that was the deal. We know there are a lot of deals around here. I know the Senator from Arizona pays a fair amount of attention to earmarks and other things done around here. I hope we will get an amendment from the Senator from Arizona that lists the special deals like the ones that exempted a few States from the Medicare Advantage cuts, like the deals that got allegedly a few votes on their side of the aisle so we could get cloture and proceed to this bill. Do you think it is part of the deal that they would not--if there really was a deal, should we not put in here that this money would go to benefit Medicare recipients and not to create a new entitlement? If you were going to take $42 billion out of Medicare money going to home health, shouldn't it have gone to making the system more solvent rather than creating a new entitlement with that and taking that money from seniors and giving it to somebody else? Shouldn't that have been part of the deal?

Mr. GREGG. Both of those are correct.

Mr. GREGG. The underlying proposal is a blatant act to try to Europeanize our economy and move us to a process where the government decides what the market should do. But consistency would require that both of those organizations be included in that if the author is going to be consistent with the theme of the amendment, which is absolutely wrong in my opinion because there is no reason that we as a Congress should decide the compensation levels for people who are in the private sector.

Mr. GREGG. I think the Senator from North Carolina has made an excellent point. Consistency would require for the AARP to be included in this amendment, if the amendment is going to go forward. I hope the amendment is not adopted. But clearly it should be consistent with all the different interest groups. It appears it is not included because some deal was cut. Is that the implication here?

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Would the Senator yield on that point, because the Senator from Arizona has raised an important point. If this is such a good program for these four States, why isn't it a good program for everybody? But more importantly, the Senator is the expert around here on earmarks. Is this not a classic earmark? And didn't we hear from the other side of the aisle that we were going to have open government; that we were not going to have this type of exercise occur within major bills; that bills weren't going to be loaded up with special earmarks assisting one Member or another? As the expert on the issue of earmarks, would the Senator comment?

Mr. GREGG. If I could ask one more question because I have been listening to this debate, and I came over because I wanted to participate a little. I think it has been an excellent and informative debate. I have been looking at the numbers here, and I know the numbers are big--big--in this first 10-year period--almost $500 billion in reductions in Medicare spending. But I think the point we need to make is that it doesn't end there. It doesn't end there. Those Medicare spending reductions go on into the next decade, too, and over the first two decades of this bill, Medicare spending reductions will account for $3 trillion--$3 trillion. How can anybody argue against what the Senator from Idaho said, which is that this translates into real reductions in Medicare benefits?