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Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I hope all of my colleagues will take a step back from this debate and examine what these cuts in Medicare and long-term care would mean in real terms for real people. I believe that these reductions are simply wrong. They violate our American values of fairness.

These are not just numbers on a page. We are talking about injecting fear into the lives of people who deserve to spend their retirement years in peace. The cuts seem all the more callous given that they are being made to finance tax cuts for the most affluent Americans.

Let us talk about people, not programs, for a moment. The people we are discussing fought the wars, paid the taxes and built the wealth that all of us here have enjoyed. We just marked the 50-year anniversary of V-E Day. Many of the people who won that war for us are now on Medicare . The least they deserve is to live their last years in dignity. In their twilight years, they deserve better than this budget gives them.

There is no way these cuts would not hit people of modest means. Medicare is not a program for the rich. Today, Medicare serves 35 million seniors, who have a median income of $17,000. Seventy-eight percent earn less than $25,000 a year. The typical senior already spends 21 percent of his or her income on out-of-pocket health costs. That compares to 8 percent for non-seniors. Should we really be jacking up those out-of-pocket costs to pay for a $20,000 tax cut for people making over $350,000 a year?

CUTS WOULD BE PAINFUL

Despite all the rhetoric on the other side of the aisle, these cuts would be painful. This is what Robert Reischauer, the highly respected former director of the CBO, had to say about the reductions:

There's no way to do this without imposing real sacrifice and real pain, and both beneficiaries and providers will feel it. The notion that this can be squeezed out of the system with greater efficiencies is wishful thinking.

Taking a hacksaw to medicare , as this budget proposes, would be devastating. Recipients of care would pay $3200 more over the next seven years. That is an enormous hardship for seniors living on modest, fixed incomes.

Businesses and workers who have private insurance would be hurt, too. Without overall reform, cutting medicare would not necessarily cut the actual cost of visiting a doctor or hospital. So doctors and hospitals would in all likelihood try to shift costs of $40 to $50 billion from medicare patients to privately insured businesses and workers. That is nothing but a hidden tax that private businesses and their employees neither deserve nor can afford.

LONG-TERM CARE

The cuts in this budget resolution would also decimate the long-term care protection that Medicaid provides seniors. Working families with a parent who needs long-term care would face nursing home bills of an average of $38,000 a year without Medicaid's long-term care protection. Where will our seniors who have spent down all their savings and now rely on Medicaid to pay for their nursing home care go without such protection?

IMPACT ON HOSPITALS

These cuts would particularly hit rural and innercity hospitals with large concentrations of elderly and low-income patients. In my own state of Connecticut, home to many urban hospitals, Medicare makes up 40 percent of all hospital revenue. Half of the hospitals in Connecticut are teaching hospitals, which rely heavily on Medicare to train tomorrow's physicians.

Many of these hospitals already operate on the edge: some may have to close their doors if such an important source of financing is slashed. Nearly 10 million Medicare recipients live in rural America, where there is often only one hospital serving a county. Draconian Medicare cuts like those proposed by the Republicans could force many of those rural hospitals out of business.

A DIFFERENT COURSE

We must do something to control Medicare spending, but we cannot do it in isolation. The problems of Medicare are the same problems facing the entire health care system. To focus only on Medicare puts its recipients at risk and would have unintended consequences for the rest of the health care system.

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