Dave Weldon

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Sort of. I was an internist. A family practitioner for senior citizens.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Gunderson amendment. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that I was one of the Members who went to Milwaukee to see what the people in Milwaukee had to say about their school voucher program. One of the conclusions that I could not help but make there is that the kids, the moms, the dads in the program love it. They think it is wonderful. The academics, the school education officials who are involved with the unions, they do not like it. I remember one young lady by the name of Yolanda who came up to me, she was in the audience, and told me about how much this program has impacted her and about how she has gone from a grade point average of 1.4 to 4.0 and how she thought we needed to expand the program in Milwaukee and indeed expand it all over the country. That is what my good friend from Wisconsin is trying to do here in this bill, to do something for these kids. The opponents of this amendment have nothing to offer. I feel that we should all support this amendment. It is a good amendment.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. chairman, I rise and speak out in support of this amendment. The NEA receives 1.6 million in a tax break from their congressional charter. This congressional charter was given to the National Education Association when it was a trade association, and it is not only quite apparent to the American public but as well to the IRS that it is no longer a trade association. It is, indeed, a union. As has been said multiple times but deserves to be said again, it would be irresponsible for this Congress to continue to allow this tax exempt status for a union when no other unions get a tax exempt status. Indeed, this $1.6 million of funds could be applied to the District of Columbia's school system to help improve their school system. So I think this is a very good amendment. It is very much an appropriate amendment. It is in keeping with being consistent in our policies. I would encourage all of my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, prior to coming to the House of Representatives, I was practicing medicine and, indeed, I was sitting at my desk and reading a copy of the American Medical News where this procedure was first described back in 1993, where the originators of this procedure printed in the article that in about 80 percent of the cases, it is purely an elective procedure. It is not a fetus that has defects, and, indeed, they admitted that they do them in not only the late second trimester, but as well in the third trimester. I was shocked that these guys would admit it in public. I was not so much shocked by the grotesqueness of the procedure because all these abortion procedures are vile but the fact that these guys would admit how they do it to the public and admit that it is an elective procedure. I very much support the legislation of the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady]. I encourage all of my colleagues to vote in support of this legislation and make partial-birth abortions illegal.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady] for introducing this bill. I remember first reading about this bill in the American medical news. I am a physician. I practice internal medicine. I still try to practice, occasionally seeing patients; and when I first read about this procedure, honestly, I was quite appalled, though I must say, I have been appalled for years at the United States abortion policies. As a physician, I took an oath when I graduated from medical school. It is called the Hippocratic oath: ``Do no harm.'' I have always felt that performing an abortion procedure is a direct violation of that Hippocratic oath. Probably nothing more graphically brings that to focus than doing the partial birth abortion. To take a baby, even if the baby has a disability, and I just want to touch briefly on this claim that these babies have disabilities. It is so ironic to me that some of the same people who would speak out against this bill and claim that it is used only on babies with disabilities, which has clearly been shown not to be true, are the same people who would seek so often to increase funding for programs for the disabled. I have found that to be so ironic, that so many of the liberal-leaning Members of this body, and people in government who are frequently some of the most vocal advocates for the disabled, are the ones who will say, This procedure is okay if the baby has a disability, which to me seems like the height of hypocrisy. Actually, before I took my Hippocratic oath, Mr. Speaker, I became quite convinced that abortion was wrong when I actually had the opportunity to see an abortion as a medical student. It was a 15-year- old girl in her second trimester, and of course, this procedure had not been devised at that [[Page H 11428]] time. They were doing a saline abortion on her. To see that personally, for me, was absolutely moving and convincing that this procedure is wrong, it is morally wrong, it is ethically wrong, and there is no way to justify it. However, this particular procedure is horrifying. I very much rise in support of this bill. Making this procedure illegal I think is mandatory. Even many people who advocate in support of abortion rights recognize that this is beyond the pale. To take a developed infant and partially deliver the child, where the baby has moving arms and moving legs, and is 3 inches away from being recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States as being a person and being protected by the full rights of the Constitution, and sucking its brains out so that it can be delivered through the undeveloped cervix, I think is just an outrage, a total outrage. To live in the United States, the land of the free and the home of the brave, the Nation that the rest of the world looks to for leadership, especially in the area of human rights and the dignity of human life, and to make a procedure like this legal I think is horrifying, and I very much speak out in support of the bill offered by the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady]. However, I will say that I do that with a certain amount of grief in my heart, because when we make this procedure illegal, they will keep aborting these babies, but they will keep aborting these babies, but they will do it by a different procedure called dilation and extraction, where they dilate the cervix and then they tear the baby apart, limb by limb, and that, to me, is as evil as this is. But I very much, nonetheless, rise in strong support of the bill of the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady]. I highly urge all my colleagues to support this bill, and end this ghastly procedure.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, as we debate tax cuts this week, I think we should look to the example of President Reagan. In 1981, President Reagan cut taxes, setting off the longest peacetime expansion in American history. What happened during the ensuing decade? More than 19 million high paying jobs were created. Real median family income increased 13 percent. The number of Americans trapped in poverty dropped by 4 million. The rich carried a greater percentage of the tax burden. Now listen carefully. Of those in the bottom fifth income bracket in 1979, 65 percent jumped at least two income brackets during the 1980's. And more made it to the top income bracket than stayed in the bottom. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle: Do you want to help the poor? Well then, cut taxes.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, last week the President made an astonishing confession. He said that his tax increase of 1993 might have been too much. What he failed to admit is that in his 1992 campaign he promised to cut taxes, not increase them. Republicans promise to cut taxes for the middle class and small business, not raise them, and that is just what we are going to do. Our $500 per-child tax credit will eliminate Federal taxes for families making less than $25,000 a year. Those making between $25,000 and $30,000 will have their Federal liability cut in half. In addition our capital gains tax reductions will benefit the middle class. The IRS found that 77 percent of those who paid capital gains in 1993 earned less than $75,000. You won't hear this Republican-led Congress apologizing to the American people for raising taxes too much, because unlike the President, we have no intention of doing so.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, unlike the gentlewoman who just spoke from Florida, I support our Medicare reform proposal. Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of use of the cut word. I recently had a very interesting conversation with a hospital administrator from my district who said, you are going to be cutting Medicare. We got to talking a little bit, and it seemed that his budget was about $100 million, and $65 million of that came out of Medicare. I asked him, were we going to reduce your amount coming from Medicare? No. Mr. Speaker, the truth is, under the administration's proposal, the growth to that particular hospital in Medicare over 7 years was going to be 100 percent, that that hospital would end up getting about $130 million, and we are talking about reducing the increase to that hospital from $65 million to about $100 million over the next 7 years. I ran on one of my platform issues being that we will never, ever be able to rein in out-of-control growth in so many of these Federal programs if we continue to call reductions in the rate of growth of a program a cut. If we are going to say a 10 percent per year increase is our base line and if you are going to lower that to 6 percent per year, that is a cut. We will never restore solvency to the Medicare Program, we will never restore solvency to Washington, DC, and we will end up in bankruptcy. Prior to coming to this House, I was a practicing physician. Indeed, 50 percent, a half, of the people that I took care of as a doctor were Medicare patients. Indeed, I continue to see patients when time allows when I go back to my district, many of whom are senior citizens. Though 50 percent of my patients were Medicare patients, only about 45 percent of my revenue came from those. Because, you see, Medicare reimburses lower than the private sector. But even though Medicare reimburses lower than the private sector, the rate of growth in the private sector is substantially less. Indeed, I was part of the committees that got together and drew up this Medicare plan, and one of the most amazing things we found out was that in some of these programs in the private sector they are actually reducing their premium. You have a situation where you have health care plans in southern California where they are lowering by 1.5 percent the charges to the companies in those areas, and we have here a government-run plan that is steaming along at 10.5 percent, and we have a Medicare plan that the Medicare trustees are telling us is going to be bankrupt. So we have come up with a proposal. There have been a number of outrageous, outlandish, inaccurate claims made by the opposition tonight. One of them is tat we are doing this is Medicare to pay for tax cuts for the rich. Well, let me tell you about our tax program. It is a $500 per child tax reduction for families with kids. I do not know how that translates into a tax cut for the rich. We paid this spring for every single penny in those tax reductions to those working families by reducing discretionary spending. All of the money in this plan goes to maintain the solvency of the Medicare plan. It is going to be insolvent. The administration, the Democrat administration itself has told us it is going to be insolvent. Now, I am getting a lot of phone calls from seniors in my district, and I think they are great phone calls. A lot of them have been drummed up by AARP, and I have to say I think this is wonderful that we are having this debate, it is wonderful we are having this dialog. One of the questions I get asked is, are you going to increase my copay? It is currently at 20 percent. Medicare pays 80 percent. I hear that you are going to increase the copay. The answer to that is in this House bill we are going to vote on tomorrow, no, we are not going to do that. Another thing that I have seniors calling me about, they are asking me, are you going to increase the deductible? And the answer to that is, again, no. The deductible is going to stay the same. It is going to be $100. I have seniors calling me and saying, are you going to force me into an HMO? Are you going to restrict my access to physicians' care? And the answer to that, again, is no. If you want to choose one of these Medicare Plus plans, you can. We are [[Page H 10303]] not going to force any seniors into anything they do not want to be in. This is a good plan. It waves Medicare. I recommend that all of my colleagues support it.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, when I was a kid growing up, one of my favorite TV shows was Dragnet. There was a fellow on that show, Officer Friday, and one of his expressions that I liked, if he was getting a lot of extraneous information he would just say just ``The facts, ma'am. We need the facts.'' I would like to get into a little bit of the facts surrounding the so-called arrest of these innocent senior citizens at the Committee on Commerce meeting yesterday. When I heard about this, I was indeed myself concerned, and I asked some of the members of the Committee on Commerce what went on, and the Committee on Commerce hearing was disrupted by a group of seniors who just happened to be a group of seniors affiliated with a group called the National Council of Senior Citizens, which is a very liberal left wing organization which this previous Democratic-led Congress had been giving about $75 million a year to for the express purpose of lobbying the Congress to spend more and more and more money. Yes, you the taxpayers were having your tax dollars given to an organization that was devoting its efforts full time to lobbying the Government to engage in more deficit spending. This group, this innocent group of seniors, who came in were quietly and politely asked to leave, not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, not five times, but six times they were asked to leave the Committee on Commerce meeting because they were interrupting the hearing. Finally, it became quite apparent to all those there that the purpose of those people being in that room who were working with this liberal left wing organization, the purpose was to make sure that they got arrested so that they could get some photographs, so that those photographs could be used in newspapers, in magazines, and in this body. This is a staged event. Mr. Speaker, I have been talking to the senior citizens in my district and they understand that we have a problem. Indeed, the nature of the problem was established credibly by three Democrats working in the White House, Robert Rubin, Robert Reich, and Donna Shalala, who said the fund is projected to be exhausted. What did we do, Mr. Speaker? When we got this information, we sat down with AARP. No, we did not talk to the National Council of Senior Citizens, because their only answer is to raise taxes and increase spending and borrow more money. We talked to responsible groups. We talked to the senior citizens. We talked to the hospital providers and we talked to the physician providers as well. We have come up with a plan that I think is reasonable and credible. It provides choices for senior citizens. If a senior likes the plan that they are in right now and likes their physician, they can select traditional Medicare and they can stay in it. If they want to opt for some different options, we have a new program called Medicare Plus, which will allow senior citizens to select a variety of different options. Those include if they are getting near retirement and they like the coverage that they have with their current employer, if that employer's insurance provider has a senior option, they can actually select to stay with that company if they want to. If they want to, they can select a vehicle called a Medical Savings Account, which allows them to really control their dollars and determine exactly how it is going to be spent. There is another option in there for the establishment of provider-sponsored networks. Why is that in there? It is in there for this reason. Managed care has been shown to be, in many ways, a better way to deliver care that is of very, very good quality, and it is also a way to help control escalating and spiraling costs in the managed care environment. There are many communities that do not have managed care vehicles available to the people in those communities. We have allowed hospitals and physicians to form networks together. They are called provider-sponsored networks, so that they can offer managed care vehicles, managed care systems for the seniors in those communities. Now, in the process of doing that, we did have to repeal a lot of provisions in previous law that prohibited physicians from getting together. We have to repeal those provisions or they cannot get together. Mr. Speaker, I think we clearly received a definite message that our plan was credible and it was workable. The Washington Post, of all publications, a publication that has a long tradition, a long record of supporting Democrats and attacking Republicans in this city, came out with an editorial where they said the Democrats campaign, the MediScare campaign, they called it crummy stuff, demagoguery big time, they called it scare talk, expostulation, they said it was irresponsible. What did the Washington Post, the traditional voice for liberal Democratic policies, say about our plan? [[Page H 10053]] Congressional Republicans have confounded skeptics. It is credible, it is gutsy, and I think it is a good plan. I think it is good for seniors. I think it is good for America, and I think it will help us to balance the needs of seniors with needs to be responsible with our tax dollars and all Americans should support this plan.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. I want to thank the gentleman for yielding. I just want to make a point that I think is a very important one. This disruption of a committee hearing, this staged, theatrical disruption, to include photographers being present, and these photographs being brought here into this House, I think clearly demonstrates how desperate our opponents are in this Medicare debate. They have not put forward a credible plan to restore, protect, and preserve Medicare. They have not put forward a credible proposal. I said earlier when I was speaking that the Washington Post itself has come out and said our plan is credible. They have not been able to do that. They do not have a plan to restore Medicare, and they realize we are about to do something that will probably be very, very good for seniors in restoring the solvency of the Medicare plan, and they are literally desperate to do something to stop us from doing good. I think it is really a shame that that is what politics in this city has gotten down to, where these kinds of tactics have to be used. I think our plan is a reasonable plan. I think our plan is a well thought out plan. I think we have gotten a lot of input from a variety of different groups in open meetings. There have not been any secret meetings here at all. Committee on Commerce, as you said, had 10 hearings. I think the Committee on Ways and Means has had 30 meetings. We have had hearings and hearings and hearings and hearings on restoring the solvency to the Medicare plan, and we have put forward a proposal that everybody seems to be saying is reasonable and balanced and restores solvency to the Medicare plan. Not only does it do those things, but it provides our seniors more choice in selecting their health care plans. I think it is a good plan, and I think it is a sorry day in the annals of political history in this city when the minority party has to resort to these kinds of desperate tactics in this debate. Let us have an open debate, let us have an open debate and really discuss the various virtues and merits of our Medicare plan, and let us not resort to these kinds of tactics.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. I just want to amplify on a point that the gentleman from California [Mr. Kim] just made, which I think is an extremely important point. In developing our plan, we met with a variety of different groups, both consumer groups and senior groups, as well as provider groups. And we, frankly, were shocked to discover that in many of the private groups that do health care, they are actually seeing their cots go down. So here we have on this one side this government-run program with all its bureaucracy, with all its fraud and waste, and it is increasing at 10.5 percent. Then you go to these civilian-run, private programs, where they are actually reducing the premium. It is not growing at 3 percent, it is not growing at 5 percent, it is not growing at 6 percent. They are actually lowering the premiums to the employers, and that helps those employers be more competitive. It helps them to be more competitive on the international market, where so much of the competition is going on right now. [[Page H 10056]] So what we did is we said, how are you doing that? How have you been able not only to lower the rate of increase of health care costs, but to actually see some real dollar reductions in your costs in health care? And we have taken some of those principles that they have adopted, many of which--actually what they accomplish is they root out fraud and abuse. And we have adopted some of those into our Medicare Plus program. Now, our friends on the other side of the aisle would like to say that we do not want that, we do not want that. We cannot have that. We want to maintain the status quo. But the reality is the working people who work for these companies who have adopted many of these managed care type plans have to live under those managed care plans. The ultimate irony of all this is, if you do pause and you ask those working people, the people who are paying the bills for the Medicare plan through their payroll taxes, how do they like them, what they think of those plans, they say they are great. They love them. They think they are wonderful, and they indeed, many of them, are happy that it saves money for their employers so their employers can be more successful. And they indeed are very, very happy that it weeds out fraud and abuse. Mr. Speaker, that was such a crucial point that the gentleman from California [Mr. Kim] brought up. All we are doing is saying, gosh, how did you guys out there in the free market manage to do this? Let us see if we can put a little of your free market common sense into our Government program. That is what we have done with our Medicare Plan. To accuse us of some of the things that are coming from the left on this issue, I think is just dead wrong. It is a good plan.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I was a practicing physician before I came to the U.S. Congress, and, actually, the truth is a lot of those working families on limited incomes, families where maybe the husband has a $15,000, $20,000 a year job, and the wife may have a part-time job while the kids are in school making $6,000 or $7,000 a year, many of those families have no health insurance, they have zero health insurance. I have seen that in my practice, where they do not have the money to pay me, and you have to set up a schedule of payments or you have to just write that off, because you know they cannot afford it. So you end up seeing them for free. We have been taxing those people to subsidize the part B premium for many very, very wealthy senior citizens. This is just another example, I believe, of how our plan is a well thought out plan, a balanced plan. What we are asking is those wealthy seniors, who have the money to pay for their part B premium, that they pick it up themselves. So we have some provisions in there that will make sure that those affluent wealthy senior citizens are paying, indeed, their fair share of what their health care costs are and that we are not excessively burdening working families, many of whom have no health insurance. I think that is a very, very good balanced feature of our Medicare reform proposal and our Medicare Plus plan.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. That will be hard to follow on. As always, he spoke very, very well on this issue. I want to close by pointing out that the Washington Post itself, a publication that has a long-standing reputation of opposing Republican initiatives and supporting Democratic initiatives, and I raise that not to criticize the Washington Post but just to emphasize that this is basically a statement from a group who has been traditionally our critics, they say that the Republican's Medicare plan has confounded the skeptics, it is credible, it is gutsy, and it addresses a genuine problem that is only going to get worse. This is what they had to say about our opponents. They called their proposal crummy stuff. They called it demagoguery big time, scare talk, expostulation, and they called it irresponsible. What you were just talking about, you were talking about being responsible when you talked about leaving our children not a debt but leaving them a good posterity at this, that is called being responsible. That is called being a responsible parent when you do that. That is what this is about. It is a responsible proposal that we are putting forward and what our opponents are doing is irresponsible, and I thoroughly support the Republican Medicare reform plan, the Medicare Plus plan. I think it is a good plan. It will preserve and protect Medicare for our seniors. I think it is good for seniors, it is good for working people who are getting near retirement age, and it is good for those young people who will be saddled with all those taxes if we do not straighten the problems out. I thank this gentleman from Louisiana for planning this 1-hour special session to talk about this. I think this has been very, very good. The gentleman from California [Mr. Kim] has made some very, very good comments. I think this is a very, very complicated issue, but we covered a lot of the high points on what our plan offers.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I want to just amplify on this fraud and abuse issue, because it is a very, very important area. I had a series of townhall meetings with senior citizens in my district over the summer, and one of the messages I heard over and over and over again is we have to do something about this waste and abuse in the system. I had a lady come to me, she had a bill that was for her week in the hospital and it showed her staying 2 weeks in the hospital. I had another gentlewoman come to me with a bill that showed they billed for her being in the hospital and her husband being in the hospital at the same exact time when he was not in the hospital at all. He was at home and coming in to visit her every day. So we have some real problems in the system with that. One of the aspects of the Medicare Plus plan is these provider-sponsored networks. I want to underscore a very, very important point in that feature of Medicare Plus. If there is any excessive testing being done, if there is any excessive procedures being done, the person who picks up the tab for those is not the taxpayer; it is not the Federal Government, and it is not the senior citizen, it is the provider in that network who did that unnecessary test and who did those unnecessary procedures. So that will be a tremendous incentive in that part of our reform package, in Medicare Plus, that will make sure that we really do root out fraud and abuse. I think that feature, coupled with the things you were mentioning, increased penalties, a hot line where they can report fraud, when you start looking at all those things coming into effect, we will have a lot of savings in rooting out a lot of this fraud and abuse.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, President Clinton's Medicare trustees told us Medicare will be bankrupt by the year 2002. As a physician, I am one of a few Members of Congress who has treated Medicare patients. I understand how important this program is for the seniors and the future generations. Under the Republican plan, Medicare spending increases from $4,800 to $6,700. This is per senior. This is an increase of $1,900 and exceeds the projected inflation rate. For those in the other party and in the media who keep calling this a cut, I should put it another way. If you had a basket with 48 apples in it, how do you get to 67? Do you add apples to the basket or do you take apples out? Republicans agree that you add 19 apples to the basket in order to reach 67. Matehmatics agrees with us. We are increasing Medicare, but at a less than 10-percent rate increase. This is responsible and reasonable, and we will preserve and protect the Medicare plan. I urge all of my colleagues to support the Republican proposal.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Now, the co-pay, that is the 20 percent that Medicare does not cover. So Medicare is going to continue to cover the 80 percent, and it is not going to decrease at all; correct?

Mr. WELDON of Florida. You are saying if we did not give families with children, the most heavily taxed group over the past 40 years in this country, an issue that is contributing to the breakdown in the family in the United States, the heavy tax burden on those young families with kids, if we took that tax break away from them, the Medicare plan would still be insolvent and we would still have to have this bill to try to protect and preserve Medicare?

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Let us suppose we did not have our tax cut for families with children. Would the Medicare plan be solvent then?

Mr. WELDON of Florida. What about the issue of fraud and abuse? I know that is a very, very important one for the seniors in my district, many of whom have complained very bitterly about seeing tremendous amounts of that going on, people being billed for hospital stay when they were not in the hospital, people going in for lab tests and being charged twice for that lab test. Do we have some provisions in our bill that will deal with that problem once and for all and get some real, or get a real handle on the fraud and abuse issue?

Mr. WELDON of Florida. That is going to stay the same.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I just want to clarify a couple of the points that the gentleman made. The deductible right now, that stands at $100 per year per beneficiary.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank my distinguished colleague for yielding. I did want to inquire of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, and he basically alluded to the reason at the tail-end of his comments, but I think it is something worth stressing, why would the Democrats do this? Why would they stage an event? Why would they stoop so low as to get frail, elderly senior citizens, who may not have even known where they were, and wheeled them into an event like this? Why are they doing this? And the gentleman answered that, really. They are really desperate. This is really a desperate team, Mr. Speaker. They know they are on the losing end here. The gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Norwood], I think clearly made the case, and the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Chambliss], as well, that the people in our districts, the people in those hometowns, realize the system is broke. They realize something needs to be done, and they are really looking to us to make the changes, to make sure that Medicare is there for their parents, to make sure that Medicare is there for themselves. And we have a plan that makes sense and that is a rational plan. The gentleman from Kansas [Mr. Tiahrt] was correct when he alluded to the fact that I am a physician. I made a commitment to the voters of my district when I agreed to run and serve and come here, and that is that I would serve for 8 years, and respect Florida's 8 year limit on service, and then I would go back to my hometown. And my plan is to go back to practicing medicine. Fully 50 percent of my patients were senior citizens. I had a substantial Medicare practice and, indeed, I have to say, this issue of the importance of Medicare hit home for me in a very personal way about 4 weeks ago, when my father, 75-year-old combat war veteran from World War II, a retired postal worker, had a stroke. Now, fortunately, thank God, it was a small stroke, and he is looking at making a good recovery. But I am very happy that he has a good health insurance plan in the Medicare system and that will be there for him to provide him the coverage that he needs for physicians and for hospital care to see him through this event so that he can get [[Page H 10043]] back to home and return to independent living, as he had before. And this reform plan, this proposal that we have, I think is an outstanding proposal. I am very happy that both of you gentlemen from the Committee on Commerce that have worked so hard on this program are here to talk about it because it is a good plan. It allows senior citizens the option to stay in standard Medicare. It allows senior citizens who are already in HMOs that they are happy with to stay in that HMO. It allows physicians and communities to set up provider-sponsored networks so that they can form managed care networks if they want. It also has an option in there for medical savings accounts so that seniors who want to set up a medical savings account time option will be able to do that. There is also an option in there for those people who are approaching retirement and they have much like the insurance plan that they currently have with their employer, if that insurance company offers a product for senior citizens, that they can select that option and stay with that plan and stay with those providers in that plan. So we have a host of options in this. It has been scored by the Congressional Budget Office as realizing the savings necessary to keep the program solvent and it has been declared by the Clinton administration that the program is going to go insolvent. I think this is an excellent plan. My hat is off to those members of Ways and Means and Commerce, such as the distinguished gentlemen from Georgia and from Pennsylvania, who have worked very hard, very diligently, I believe, on this. And I think when all is said and done and the American public sees the plan, they are going to like the plan. And they are also going to realize how desperate our opposition really was to resort to the kind of cheap tricks like they did yesterday in the Committee on Commerce. I think it was a sorry day in the annals of Democrat political history that they had to stoop that low, and I think we have got a good plan. I think the plan is going to pass. I think we are going to have Democrats voting for our plan in the end because they know it is a good plan. I think the public is going to support it. I very much want to compliment you, Mr. Tiahrt, for putting together this discussion to talk about this very important thing, because this is a very important issue. We need to take the time to make sure that this is properly spelled out to the public and they understand it.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. That is as I understand it. I think that is an important point worth stressing here, that we are not going to be raising co-pays, and we are not going to be raising deductibles. Actually what we are planning on doing with the Medicare premium basically is the same thing that our Democrat President over in the White House is proposing doing. That is to let it increase gradually with the cost of inflation. This is one of the reasons why I think this reform proposal is really an excellent proposal because for those seniors on a limited budget who are very dependent on making sure that they have good quality medical care because they have heart disease, they have arthritis, they have diabetes and they have to make sure they get in to see the doctor every month or every 2 months or every 3 months, they are trying to get by on the Social Security check. We are not going to be putting increased burdens on those seniors. We are going to be making sure that the resources are available for them so that they can continue to see their physician. We are also going to be giving them that continued freedom of choice so that if they are happy with their practitioner that they will be able to continue to go see the doctor that they have been comfortable with for many years. I think that is extremely important. I know that in my practice, when I took care of seniors, I knew that it was important to them to be able to know that, if they got sick and they were in the emergency room, that their doctor was going to be there for them and that they were going to have their Medicare to pick up the tab. They were not going to be bankrupted by an excessively large medical bill that they could not afford to pay. Our proposal, the Republican proposal that we are putting forward, preserves that for senior citizens. I think it is a good plan. I think it is a well-balanced plan. I think it was a real sorry state of affairs to see how desperate our opponents were in trying to score political points to do what they have done with this cheap political shot. I think the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Greenwood] really revealed something when he came down here to the floor and said, ``Let us have an open debate and let us really debate the issues,'' and I would put forward to members of the minority party who may be watching these proceedings that I would be delighted to appear on the floor of this House with the Members gathered here today and debate those people openly and fairly. Let us have an open hour where we can really exchange issues and really talk about this plan because this is a good plan. This is a plan that I think meets the needs of our seniors. It is a well-balanced plan. We did take input, as the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Norwood] said. We did take input from the seniors' groups. I know I went back to my district and I met with AARP people three times, and I showed them our product. They were afraid of change. I have to say there was some concern in the room. But they understand that something has to be done to preserve this program, that it is going to be insolvent and that it is starting to go insolvent next year. So they know some changes need to be made, and they believe that this is a good proposal and it is something they can live with and that will help to make sure Medicare is there for all seniors in the future.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Only $7 more a month.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Okay. The Clinton administration was talking about letting that increase to about $75 per month over the next 5, 6 years, as I understand it, and his attempt to balance Medicare. And what will the Republican proposal be doing?