Medicare

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I wish to speak briefly today about Medicare, about the law, and specifically a law that Congress passed in 2003 which provided for something called the Medicare trigger. This provided that when the Medicare trustees would indicate that a Medicare funding warning should issue according to that law, then the President of the United States under that law must, within 15 days, submit to Congress proposed legislation to respond to that warning.

What does all this mean? We know the Medicare trustees made the situation clear that Medicare will run out of money by the year 2024. Medicare's unfunded liabilities are more than $24 trillion and growing. In other words, there is a $24 trillion gap between the promises the U.S. Government has made to seniors and the funding to pay for it. Of course, as the Chief Actuary stated, this is actually an optimistic scenario, that we can fund Medicare through 2024.

The President of the United States has failed to comply with this law duly passed by Congress and signed into law. I do not really know why the President has failed to meet this legal responsibility of the law. I hope it is an oversight, and I hope it is one he will correct shortly. Having no plan while the President has criticized the House for the plan they passed is bad enough, but failing to submit a plan when the President of the United States is required to do so by law is a violation of the law, something the President has taken an oath to uphold.

There is no doubt about it, section 802 entitled ``Presidential Submission of Legislation'' uses the word ``shall.'' It is not ``may,'' it is not ``can,'' and it is not ``it would be a good idea.'' It says the President shall submit to Congress, within a 15-day period beginning on the day the budget submission to Congress is made, proposed legislation responding to this Medicare funding warning. March 1 marked the day 15 since the President submitted his budget, and the Medicare trustees, as we all know, have been ringing the alarm bell for years. But, unfortunately, this is not the only provision of the law the President has neglected.

We could talk about the Greek debt crisis. On Tuesday, the President talked about the Greek debt crisis in a joint press conference with Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany. This is what the President said about the Greek debt crisis:

We have pledged to cooperate fully in working through these issues on a bilateral basis but also through international and financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund.

Obviously, Greece has suffered a debt crisis. They have the International Monetary Fund, funded by various nations, to bail them out. Unfortunately, when the United States has a debt crisis, if we do nothing about it, there will be no one left to bail us out.

The problem with the statement of the President about the International Monetary Fund is that the Congress has also spoken on that issue. Senator Vitter and I sponsored an amendment last summer that was incorporated into the so-called Dodd-Frank Act or the financial services regulatory reform bill. This amendment was approved unanimously by the Senate and became law by the President's hand. This provision, included in section 1501 of the Dodd-Frank Act, requires the Treasury Secretary to determine whether IMF loans to countries that are already deeply in debt will likely be repaid and certify that determination to Congress. Furthermore, if an IMF loan will not be repaid, the Treasury Secretary is required to direct the executive director to vote in opposition to the proposed loan. These provisions became Federal law for a reason--because we sought to protect U.S. taxpayers from being used by the IMF to bail out foreign nations that have been making irresponsible spending decisions.

As I said earlier, I hope the failure of the President to comply with this mandatory requirement under the Medicare law we passed in 2003 is simply an oversight. But we know that so far the President and the majority party in the Senate have not submitted--the President has actually submitted a budget that doubles the debt in 5 years and triples it in 10 years, but he has made no response to the Medicare trustees' statement that Medicare will be insolvent in 13 years. Instead, he has attacked the only people who have been responsible enough to come up with a proposal. Admittedly, the proposal may not be perfect, but it is a responsibility of all of us to do what we can to try to solve problems, not just attack people and use it for political advantage when other people try to step up and meet their obligations.

The issue is respect for the law, and the issue is whether the checks and balances in our Constitution are still in place. The question is whether the President somehow considers himself above the law or whether the law applies to him just as it does to each one of us.

I hope this is an oversight. I hope the President will remedy that oversight and he will submit proposed legislation to deal with this impending insolvency of Medicare forthwith.

I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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