Vote Smart's Synopsis:

Vote to pass a bill that reforms Medicare, low-income housing, and welfare in order to facilitate spending cuts.

Highlights:

• Raises the eligibility age for Medicare health insurance benefits from 65 to 67 over a span of 30 years.

• Establishes a Medicare Choice program under which eligible individuals are able to choose between receiving Medicare benefits through the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program or through a Medicare Choice plan.

• Increases the monthly premium levels for upper-income seniors.

• $38.9 billion to States to expand the provision of health insurance coverage for low-income children for fiscal years 1998 - 2007.

• Requires the secretary of Housing and Urban Development to enter into agreements with participating administrative entities to implement mortgage restructuring and rental assistance plans for Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-insured multifamily housing mortgages.

• Authorizes the Secretary of Energy to store petroleum products owned by a foreign government or its representative in underutilized Strategic Petroleum Reserve facilities, by lease or otherwise.

• Establishes the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare to review and analyze the long term financial condition of the Medicare program, to identify financial problems, analyze potential solutions, and make recommendations on improving the financial structure, balance of benefits, and other issues.

• Directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to implement a demonstration project to evaluate the use of a third-party contractor to conduct the Medicare Choice plan enrollment and disenrollment functions.

• Increases the public debt limit to $5.95 trillion.

• Authorizes the sale of Governors Island in New York no earlier than fiscal year 2002, and calls for all proceeds to be deposited into the Treasury.

• Requires the auction of electromagnetic spectrum space.

• Revises Welfare-to-Work requirements by treating a family with a disabled parent as a one-parent household, allowing the caretaker relative of a child under the age of 6 to work for 20 hours per week instead of 40, and allowing married teens to count vocational education for their work requirement.

Full Bill Text

Full Bill Text