Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. The entire consumer debt. The Senator is right, ``billion dollars''; $928 billion.

Mr. GREGG. Just a second. I will get to the trillion dollars. The 2- percent savings on that is $18 billion annually. On home ownership mortgages, the entire debt is $4.3 trillion--$4.3 trillion--which means that the annual savings on that number is approximately $90 billion. So you put those two together, and you are up to $100 billion of savings in interest costs that we are going to generate for the American consumer over the next year, every year that we have in place this balanced budget. I did not happen to get the number for what the gross amount is of student loans, but I think that would be a very interesting number. The gross amount of student loans which we have in this country, take 2 percent off that, and I suspect you are going to see that the dividend to the students in this country far exceeds the number which is being considered here over a 5-year or 7-year plan. I think this is critical to understand because there is nobody on that side, nobody, who is going to vote to institute the type of changes that are necessary in order to get to a balanced budget which generates this dividend, this reduction in interest rates. I think it is critical. I appreciate the Senator from Utah correcting my math. That is deeply critical. But I think it is very important, as the Senator from Utah has pointed out; it is a very significant fact.

Mr. GREGG. That is right.

Mr. GREGG. I think this point is very important to emphasize because I asked my staff. If they are going to continue to spend this 2-percent that is generated as a result of interest rates coming down, should not we at least find out what that benefit is to the American people generally, not only in the area of deficit reduction but generally? So I asked my staff. They talked to the people at the Federal Reserve and found what the gross consumer debt is in this country and what the gross home ownership debt is in this country. One can make a simple calculation. What is 2-percent of that worth to the American people? They did that. I am not sure how good their math is, but their numbers say that the 2-percent savings on the gross consumer debt, which happens to be $928 trillion, 2-percent savings----

Mr. GREGG. If the Senator will yield for an additional question.

Mr. GREGG. Does the Senator from Utah think there is a certain amount of irony in this? You have these Members from the other side of the aisle who I know come here in good faith, spending money which is basically the result of the efforts made by Members on our side of the aisle to get the budget balanced, which dollars are generated by a scoring of a balanced budget, as a result of which the CBO says they can score a 2-percent reduction in interest rates. So the money which is being used in this amendment to fund this alleged expenditure, or this expenditure they are proposing, is generated by a 2-percent dividend which is the result of the drop in interest rates. Yet, they totally ignore at the same time that that 2- percent dividend in a drop in interest rates will run to the benefit of all the students who are borrowing money, all the homeowners who are borrowing money, all the people who have credit cards, all the folks in this country who are involved in the use of credit, whether it is for a home or for getting through the day with their Visa card or MasterCharge card, or whether it is their education. So they are perfectly happy to spend the money that is generated by this 2-percent dividend, but they give us no credit for scoring the benefits to the students of this country as a result of getting that 2- percent dividend. Is not that ironic?

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that the time be charged equally with the time running against both sides.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment presented at the desk by Senator Cohen be modified. I send a copy of the modification to the desk.

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, will the Senator from Utah yield for a question?

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, first, I want to compliment the Senator from New Mexico on his summary of the debate and especially the arguments made on the other side, because it really is a they-want-it- both-ways argument that they have been making here and, unfortunately, in the process they have left the senior citizens holding the bag. Because, as the trustees have pointed out to us and as the Senator from New Mexico pointed out, this is what we are worried about. This is the bankruptcy of the Medicare trust fund. It occurs. It occurs as a result of the fact that we will be taking more out of the fund than is being put into the fund or that the benefits are increasing, the costs of it are increasing so fast that we cannot maintain the fund in its present structure. And we have to address this if we are going to address the solvency of the trust fund and if we are going to have the senior citizens of this country have an insurance plan. Now, the proposal from the Democratic Members is to take $100 billion of projected interest savings that we may get as a result of getting to a balanced budget, which they will not vote for, and somehow just throw this back at the plan. Well, that has not worked in the past. The trustees told us rather specifically that if you are going to get the trust fund into solvency, you have to fundamentally reform the Medicare health care system. We can look at the history of these various let's-tinker-at-the-edges approaches of throwing money at the present proposal. Under the Democratic proposal we see that this line here, which is the chart of spending under Medicare as compared to the estimated savings that we would get from different action than has been taken over the years. We have not in any way limited the rate of growth of spending in the Medicare trust fund. The Medicare trust fund continues to expand after we do this ``let's-throw-some-more-money-at-it'' proposal such as the Democrats have proposed today. The fact is, unless you control the rate of growth of spending in the Medicare trust fund by fundamentally reforming the way that health care is delivered for seniors and giving seniors more choices in the area of health care, you are never going to get to this chart, which is the chart that we are concerned about, where the line levels out so that it does not go into bankruptcy. And that has been told to us not by Republicans or Democratic Members of the Senate but by the trustees of the trust fund speaking to us about their concern about where the trust fund is going. And this leads to the second point that I want to make, which is that the reason the Medicare trust fund is in such trouble is because of the fact that Medicare is a 1960's health care system going into the year 2000 and beyond. It is not relevant any more to the way that health care is efficiently and effectively delivered, with quality, in this country. That is shown by this chart which reflects the fact that amongst the private sector where health care costs have stabilized and in fact the health care premium costs have come down, 64 percent of the private sector individuals today are now in managed care; whereas, 94 percent of senior citizens remain in fee for service. Well, that is reasonable from a cultural standpoint, because seniors grew up with fee for service. They grew up with the concept of having a specific doctor that they could go to. In the fifties and sixties, that was the only type of health care delivered in this country. But as we move through the nineties, as we move through the years 2000 and beyond, it is very clear that health care delivery, to be efficient and to be of high quality, is shifting gears in this country, and in the private sector the people are opting into a fixed-cost system where they go to a provider, either a group of doctors or a consortium, an HMO or PPO, and, as a result, the cost of health care has dropped dramatically, as is shown by this next chart. We have seen that in the private sector, as HMO's and the managed care, fixed-fee cost insurance approach have been pursued by the private sector and increased in participation, as was shown earlier, the cost of health care has dropped precipitously in the private sector by more than 50 percent. We are not talking about cuts here again. We are not talking about taking the Medicare Program and cutting anything, as the Senator from New Mexico pointed out so eloquently. We are talking about dramatic increases in the Medicare system, but what we are talking about is less dramatic increases than are projected. We are talking about a system that is now growing at 10.5 percent annually and trying to get its rate of growth down to 7 percent annually. What does it mean in dollar terms? It means this year on a per capita basis, a Medicare recipient will receive $4,300. In the year 2002, it will be $6,300. Those [[Page S7061]] are significant increases. And $96 billion more will be spent on Medicare in the year 2002 than is being spent in this year. So we are not talking about cutting anything. We are talking about slowing the rate of growth of Medicare. What we have seen in the private sector is by going into managed care proposals, they have slowed the rate of growth. They have gotten their inflation rates down dramatically just in the last 3 years. Will we realize those types of savings in the Medicare system? No, obviously not. But will we realize significant savings, significant enough to get that 3-percent difference that we are looking for from 10 percent rate of growth down to 7-percent rate of growth? Yes, we will, by going through the reform programs we are talking about. On our side, we are not talking in generalities and we are not talking in terms of politics, we are talking in terms of substance, substantive reforms in the Medicare system to ensure its solvency, and we are making proposals in this area, something we are not hearing from the other side of the aisle. As we just saw on that last chart, we see that the premium costs as a result of going into HMO have dropped dramatically so we can realize that 7-percent cut. They dropped from a 10.5-percent rate of growth of premiums in the private sector in 1992 down to a minus 1.2 percent last year in the private sector. What a huge drop. We do not have to go that far in the public sector, we just have to get the 10-percent line down to 7 percent and we have a solvent system and a responsible system, and we will have made the savings and will have given seniors some opportunities they do not have today in the area of health care. Some people say, ``Well, if seniors go into managed care, they are going to be treated more poorly.'' As a practical matter, the history is actually managed care is doing a better job of some of our chronic illnesses than fee for service is. Right here, managed care is doing a better job in diabetes, a better job in heart conditions, a better job in high blood pressure, a better job in high cholesterol, a better job in weight problems. Why? One of the things is in a managed care atmosphere, they look very hard at preventive and wellness programs and seniors can benefit significantly from these types of programs. What we are going to say to seniors is you do not have to go into HMO's, PPO's or managed care. We are not going to say they have to go that route. We are going to create what is known as an economic incentive, market incentive. For some on the other side, the concept of marketplace is an anathema, and they do not want to hear it in relation to health care. If we use the marketplace, we can encourage seniors who are traditionally in fee for service to move from fee for service into HMO's and PPO's and get better health care in the process and get the lower cost for the Federal Government in the process, a double win as we go down that road. This, I think, reflects the fact that we have also heard a lot about, ``Well, if seniors go into the managed care system, you are going to find that they have more difficult problems, that they have more significant problems than the population generally and therefore the system will be skewed and you can't do it.'' Well, that is old numbers, No. 1. That is old, old numbers before HMO's that they are using to cite those, before HMO's were effective and used a lot. Today, if we look at the current numbers we are seeing that the HMO enrollees are diagnosed at an earlier stage than the people who are in the fee-for-service system and in addition, that HMO enrollees generally have the same type of breakout of health care problems as fee-for-service people. So you do not have the creaming concept that you hear of this argument where HMO's are only going to take people who are well and all the sick people will stay in fee for service. Our plan does not allow adverse selection, period, so it is not an issue. The fact is the numbers are now showing us HMO systems are not adverse selecting anyway. So as a practical matter, that is not a problem. So what we are suggesting is that, No. 1, look at the trustees' report. Look at the trustees' report. It says that this system is fundamentally broke and that it has to be reformed, that you can no longer take the Band-Aid approach and that you certainly can no longer take a whole bunch of money and throw it at the system, as is proposed by our colleagues on the other side of the aisle by this amendment, that it needs fundamental reform. Second, what we are saying is we are proposing such reform. We are not proposing such reform in the context of just budget savings, we are proposing such reform in the concept of delivering better care to our senior citizens by giving them the opportunity to have the same type of plans that we as Members of Congress have. That is basically what it comes down to. By saying to them we will give you the opportunity to go out and purchase a fixed-cost plan, an HMO or a PPO and move out of fee for service and if you do that we are actually going to give you a percentage of the savings that you obtain for yourself, let you keep it and, as a result, we are going to reduce the cost, in the long run, to the Federal Government from 10 percent down to 7 percent, a very attainable goal. More importantly, we are going to make the trust funds solvent and we are going to give our seniors choices which they do not have today and, at the same time, we are going to give them the opportunity to go out in the marketplace and find health care in a variety of ways which the private sector is now using which helps us control costs. So we are talking substance here is what it comes down to and, regrettably, on the other side of the aisle they are talking politics. We are talking about reforming the Medicare system so it is solvent, they are talking about politics of the next election. It is unfortunate, but that is the way it is broken out. We are talking about balancing the budget so that our children are not stuck with a country which is bankrupt, they are talking about politics. These are our answers and our proposals and they are substantive. We await and hear a deafening silence for the proposals coming from the other side, either on how you balance the budget or how you correct the Medicare insolvency. We wait. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time back to the Senator from New Mexico.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, has the Senator from New Mexico yielded?

Mr. GREGG. No. I would say to the Senator from West Virginia that is not correct. First, as the Senator from West Virginia knows, the manner in which these savings are going to be accomplished--remember our savings rate of growth is not cut--is up to the Finance Committee. But let me suggest some of the ideas we put forward, those of us working in this area, the Medicare area, would have affected not the poor senior but would have affected the wealthy senior. I, for example, have a great deal of problem with the fact that under the part B premium you have a 75-percent subsidy of the rich in this country by the poor and the moderate-income individuals in this country. Under the part B premium, as the Senator from West Virginia knows, a person who is working 60 hours a week, he or his wife or both of them working at, say, the local restaurant, they have to pay into the general fund with their taxes. And then a person, say the top 500 retirees from IBM last year, they opt for the part B premium. They only pay 25 or 30 percent, depending on the year of the cost of that premium. And the other 75 or 70 percent is covered by general funds. So John and Mary Jones, who are working 60 hours a week down at the local restaurant, are paying into the general fund, and then their money is being taken to pay for the top 500 retirees last year from IBM who opted for part B premium. I happen to think that is wrong. I think we should affluence test the part B premium. Yes, that means some senior citizens are going to pay more. But I happen to think there are some folks in the senior citizen community who are doing quite well, who are quite wealthy, and who under the part B premium, should be paying a fair share. So there are a lot of different ways that the adjustments in rate of growth can be accomplished. I also happen to support something which I call choice care where we encourage seniors to move into a managed care, PPO-type of environment where I think we can get a fixed rate of cost on the rate of inflation in the health care system. In that system, I think seniors are going to get more in the way of health care probably for less, and in the process I believe we can get some controls over health care. But I did want to address one other point. I know the Senator from Nebraska wants to get started on his speech. Let me mention quickly this tax issue which I think is very important to point out, which is that under this resolution--you can talk about the House resolution. We are not going to vote on the House resolution right now. Maybe we will in the conference. I do not know what will happen in the conference. I am for the Senate position. I think Senator Domenici has done an exceptional job with the budget that leads us to balance for the first time in 25 years. But under our resolution it says that 90 percent of any tax cut benefit will go to people with incomes under $100,000. So I think we should have an end to all of this discussion of, ``Oh, this is just a transfer to the wealthy'' because that is a flawed definition of wealthy if the other party is going to suddenly assume that everybody under $100,000 is wealthy. Then we have a new definition of wealthy in this country. But what I wanted to end up on is the reasons we need to have this balanced budget amendment. We have heard a lot about it. We have heard it from all sorts of scenarios around here. But I would like to just refer people to an individual who I consider to be the leading historian of our time, a man named Paul Johnson. I think he teaches at Oxford. I know he is an English historian. He has written a number of really extraordinary histories of the 20th century, including ``Modern Times,'' ``Birth of the Modern,'' and a variety of just extraordinary pieces that are incredibly insightful. He wrote a piece for the New York Times, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not agree with. But the basic thrust of it was incredibly thoughtful, as he often is on what is wrong with this country if we continue to run up this debt. Let me just quote a little bit from this. The United States is running the most costly welfare state in history, as well as acting reluctantly, not consistently but certainly expensively, as the world's policeman, and even to eliminate the deficit, let alone reduce the debt, the spending will have to fundamentally be reformed. This will mean, among other things, ending the welfare state as it exists today. It may not be as hard as some people think. After all, it is scarcely a generation old. The theme of his piece here is if the United States continues to run its present debt, it will collapse or it will be in a horrendous situation. He points out that we are now ready to act as a country. He finds this unique, and it is a special time, and the time to do it is right now. He says there are two things that reflect the fact that he thinks we are ready to act. The first is sufficient congressional support, and that has already been achieved, he says. And the second is a prerequisite of popular consensus. Looking at the United States from England, he is determined that is the case, and he is a very astute fellow. Like de Tocqueville, maybe he has a better sense of where we are historically than we have ourselves. Congress is ready for reform, and so are the people. But history shows that neither means much without a dedicated leader. I am quoting here: Normally, one would expect such leadership to come from the President. In the past, the White House has shown a much greater concern for financial probity than Capitol Hill. When Congress passed Mr. Clinton's deficit reduction package during his first year in office, it did so with hardly a vote to spare in both Houses. But Mr. Clinton is not a leader, though he can sometimes be persuaded that it is in his interest to be an energetic follower. No leadership will have to come-- From the Congress. That is paraphrasing, ``the Congress.'' He uses another phrase. The fact is that we as a Congress have the obligation to do this now. We have the obligation to step up and put forth and present, as we have in the past, the budget resolution to come to a balance. I want to congratulate again Senator Domenici for having done that, and I believe fervently in doing this we will also reform fundamentally the Medicare system so that it will be solvent, and so that our senior citizens will be assured of first-class health care insurance--not for the next 7 years, but for as far as the eye can see. [[Page S7046]] I yield the floor. Mr. EXON addressed the Chair.

Mr. GREGG. I would have to say to the Senator from West Virginia I would have two concerns about that representation. The first is this: I do not think, and I believe the numbers prove this to be accurate, that you can get our budget under control, that you can get the budget of the Federal Government under control, unless you address and fundamentally reform the health care function of Federal spending. Because 55 percent of entitlement spending, independent of Social Security which we are not going to address, is health care driven. And, thus, I do not happen to think that you resolve this problem unless you take a hard look at it and you do the work and you produce a reform that is going to change the rate of growth of Medicare spending from 10.5 percent that it presently has in Medicaid, from the 10.5 percent which it presently has, to a rate of growth which we can tolerate which is about 7 percent in Medicare and probably about 5 percent in Medicaid. And those numbers are the numbers that we use in this budget resolution and I think they are reasonable for that reason. The second part of the Senator's assumption would be, ``Well, even if those numbers are reasonable, we should still put this money into Medicare and Medicaid, if it is available, if you can obtain it without doing the reform''--which I do not think you can. In other words, I do not think you can get the 2 percent savings in interest rates which comes from getting a balanced budget, unless you address the health care function which produces the balanced budget. But even if you get that transfer, what you are saying is that extra $100 billion should go in there and we should have it on top of the reform, of what would occur from reform. So you are talking about actually encouraging a rate of growth in the health care accounts which would exceed what I think we have to have as a rate of growth in order to have balance in the budget. The second reservation I would have about the Senator's point is this. There has been all this talk. I think every person on that side who has gotten up has said we are going to take this $170 billion, which we are told we are going to get. We are not sure we are going to get it. CBO says they will score this if we get to a balanced budget glidepath [[Page S7045]] and it results from the fact that interest rates go down. It is not a result of any cut in spending. It results from interest rates dropping. We are going to take this $170 billion and we are going to transfer it back to the taxpayers. We are going to say this is your money to begin with. You ought to get to keep it. You ought to get some benefit out of us balancing the budget. Everybody has gotten up on that side and said that is a benefit for the rich. You are taking from some group--whether it has been--one group has been children, one group has been unwed mothers and pregnant mothers, and another group has been the elderly--and you are giving it to the rich. This resolution says that 90 percent of any tax cut--90 percent of any tax cut--has to go with people with incomes under $100,000. Maybe there he has a new definition of wealthy in this country, but people with incomes under $100,000 I do not find, definitionally, as wealthy. So I believe first we should make the tax cut if we get this dividend, because I think it will run to the benefit of people who are today paying the price of running this Government, which is out of control. And, second, since 90 percent of it is going to go to people with incomes under $100,000 I do not happen to believe that is a transfer to the wealthy.

Mr. GREGG. I yield to the Senator from West Virginia for a question.

Mr. GREGG. The Senator from Washington is absolutely correct in all those statements and assumptions, in my opinion.

Mr. GREGG. The Senator from Washington is absolutely correct. They did not talk about a one-time cash infusion of, say, $50 billion into the fund because they recognized that will do nothing to correct the problems which they were highlighting to us. They were saying there was an urgent need for fundamental reform of the manner in which the trust health care is delivered under the Medicare system, in order to get this into actuarial balance. And a one-time cash payment is not going to solve the problem. That is basically, I presume, why they never conceived of the idea, because they are charged with correcting the problem, not with just the political response to the problem.

Mr. GREGG. I think the Senator from Washington has raised a very valid point. What the Senator from Washington is pointing out is, first off, the other side of the aisle has no budget, no proposals at all in the area of entitlement reform. Second, what they are proposing is to take what will be basically a dividend as a result of interest rates dropping and just take money and throw it at the system, a system which is fundamentally flawed, a system which is growing at twice the rate of inflation, and a system which cannot maintain itself. So the practical implications of what they are proposing is it will have no significant impact on the solvency of the trust fund because it will put into place no attitudes or reforms which will reduce that rate of growth of the trust fund. And what the trustees told us when they testified before the Budget Committee, of which the Senator from Washington is a member, and I know he is an active participant at these hearings, was there had to be fundamental reform of the trust fund, in the way we deliver health care, in order to get it into actuarial balance.

Mr. GREGG. I yield for a question, sir.

Mr. GREGG. If that is the wish of the Senator from Nebraska, that is certainly acceptable to me. I appreciate his courtesy. Mr. President, I want to address a couple of comments that have been made here relative to both Medicare and also to tax elements of this budget because I think there have been attempts to address the issue, but I do not think they have been accurate in their reflection of exactly what is going to happen. The Medicare trust fund is the issue. Its solvency is the issue. Now, the definition of solvency within the Medicare trust fund was not created by myself or members of the Budget Committee, but created by the trustees of the trust fund. They have testified, and there have been charts on this floor reflecting this fact, and there has been discussion of this, that the Medicare trust fund could well be insolvent and is going to go insolvent as of the year 2002. What have we received as a response to this insolvency from the other side of the aisle? Essentially, we have seen nothing--no proposals at all. We have seen them, however, attack with rather significant enthusiasm the proposals coming from this side of the aisle. They have attacked the number which we are proposing to address in this budget in order to try to correct the trust fund problem as being an outrageously high number, a number they have never heard of, a number they cannot conceive of, $256 billion over 7 years. I think we need to put that number in some context. If we look at the trustees' report, the trustees of the Medicare trust fund, ironically, four of whom happen to be members of this administration, including the Secretary of HHS and the Treasury Secretary, that trustees' report says that in order to maintain the solvency of the trust fund on an actuarial basis of 25 years, which is the minimum that they suggest, an adjustment in the trust fund must occur of approximately $262 billion, not over 7 years but over 5 years. We are talking about $256 billion over 7 years. We are coming in at a level which is significantly below, significantly below, what the trustees are saying--the trustees being Donna Shalala and Secretary Rubin--is necessary to obtain actuarial solvency of the trust fund. What does that mean, actuarial solvency? It sounds like a big name, a technical phraseology. What it means, quite simply, is if the senior citizens of this country are going to have the ability to have health care insurance, they have to have a health care trust fund which is solvent. The trustees have said, as of the year 2002, there will be no more insurance trust fund because there will be no money in the trust fund. In order to have money in the trust fund and to have it for a period of 25 years, they need to have an adjustment of $262 billion over 5 years. So the number that we have put forward as our goal for adjusting the trust fund is a very reasonable number and is one this is absolutely necessary at a bare minimum to assure that the senior citizens of this country actually have health insurance, something which the other side seems to be just ignoring. They come down here and say we cannot take this money and transfer it to that account, and this money from that account. But nobody mentions that the trust fund is going broke. The President's people have said that in their report. What does this number mean, again, in terms of the overall context of the Medicare Program? Does it mean the Medicare Program is being cut? That we are talking about adjusting the trust fund, the funds flowing into the trust fund, and talking about adjusting Medicare by this amount of $256 billion, does it mean the Medicare Program is being cut? That is a big number. It sounds like it might be. No, it does not mean that at all. It does not mean that at all. What we are talking about with that number is allowing the spending on Medicare payments in this country to increase by 7 percent over the period of that 7-year period. A Medicare beneficiary who today receives $4,350 per beneficiary will, in the year 2002, be receiving $6,300 per beneficiary. There is no cut there. In fact, in the year 2002, the amount of money that we will spend on the Medicare System in this country will be $96 billion more than what we are spending today. What we are talking about here is the fact that the Medicare trust fund and the spending for Medicare is increasing so fast--10\1/2\ percent annually--that we simply cannot afford it. It is bankrupting itself. As a result, there will be no insurance for senior citizens. So what we are suggesting is we take the rate of growth of Medicare spending and reduce it to something we can afford. We are not talking about cutting it. We are not talking about even reducing it to the rate of growth of health care in the private sector, which last year premiums dropped by 1.9 percent in the private sector. We are talking about allowing an annual increase of 7 percent in the Medicare trust fund, which works out to a huge amount of increased spending on Medicare over the next 7 years. It works out to a solvent Medicare System, one that is not insolvent, one where seniors will actually be getting Medicare and have dollars available for Medicare rather than not be getting dollars available for Medicare, because the trust fund would be insolvent if it continues to grow at its present rate. So this discussion of the attempts by our side to address the Medicare trust fund by putting it into balance and by reducing the rate of growth of the Medicare spending in this country and in this Government is purely political. In fact, it is so political that if we look at the President's own statements from a year ago, we realize that he agreed [[Page S7044]] with Republicans, and today his party and his administration does not seem to any longer give credence to what they said just a year ago. The President said a year ago today, Medicare and Medicaid are going up three times the rate of inflation. We propose to let it go up at two times the rate of inflation. My goodness gracious, that is exactly the Republican proposal. We took the President at his word last year. We took his proposal, and we have a rate of growth of Medicare which is two times the rate of inflation. But suddenly it is a horrible event. Not only did the President say that, but even Mrs. Clinton said that. She said that the rate of growth was too much and that we had to reduce it. More importantly, she said that cutting the rate of growth was not a cut in Medicare. She agrees with this side. Even Ira Magaziner agreed with.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I do intend to speak, but I am happy to have the Senator from Nebraska proceed, and I will speak after the Senator from Nebraska has completed his statement.

Mr. GREGG. I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. I just arrived on the floor. I understood there was an agreement that at 9:15, we would go to the statement on your side by Senator Dodd.

Mr. GREGG. ``All'' may be too many, but the vast majority.