Gregg Reacts To Vote Against Removing Medicare Cuts From Democratic Health Reform Bill

Statement

Senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) today commented on the vote on Senator McCain's proposal to remove $465 billion in Medicare cuts from the Senate's health reform bill.

Senator Gregg stated, "It is unfortunate that most of my Democratic colleagues do not recognize that Medicare is headed toward insolvency, and it has a whopping unfunded liability that now nears $38 trillion. The right course of action on Medicare would be to reform this broken program before future generations are asked to pay for bills that are not their own; we should not use Medicare cuts as a piggy bank to pay for a brand-new entitlement that has nothing to do with the health of senior citizens. If these Medicare cuts actually occur, any savings should be used to shore up Medicare so that we don't pass this massive insolvency on to our children, and they certainly should not be used as a budget gimmick to hide the true costs of this $2.5 trillion health care spending expansion. Senator McCain was right to ask that these cuts not be used to increase federal spending on health care."

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