Message from Congressman Mike Ross

Last week, after months of continuing resolutions and fierce budget debates, Congress finally approved a budget for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year, which ends September 30th. This truly bipartisan compromise budget, which I supported and voted for, was negotiated between Republican House Speaker John Boehner, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the President.

Congress must now turn its attention to the 2012 fiscal year, which begins on October 1, 2011 (fiscal years for the federal government run October 1 – September 30). Last week, the House passed a budget for the 2012 fiscal year authored by the Republican Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, H. Con. Res. 34. The budget is also known as the “Ryan Plan.” I voted against the Ryan Plan because although it does cut federal spending, it ignores our nation’s fundamental deficit spending problem. In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reports that the Ryan Plan would actually add $5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.

Making matters worse, Ryan’s plan also privatizes Medicare by dismantling the program for future beneficiaries and then using the funds for vouchers to purchase private health insurance. There are two major flaws in Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare.

The first is that beneficiaries’ vouchers would be tied to inflation while health care costs continue to skyrocket at twice the rate of inflation. So, as health care costs rise, seniors would be forced to pay more and more for their own health care. In fact, the CBO predicts that under the current Medicare system, a typical 65-year-old Medicare beneficiary in 2022 would only pay $6,150 a year in out-of-pocket health care spending. Under the Ryan Plan, a beneficiary’s share in 2022 would more than double to $12,510 per year. Privatizing Medicare is dangerous and it does nothing to reduce costs – it simply shifts the cost from the federal government onto the backs of our seniors.

Secondly, the Ryan plan assumes seniors would be able to get private health insurance with their vouchers. As any senior knows, the older you get, the more difficult it is to find affordable and adequate private health insurance. That’s exactly why Medicare was created – to ensure America’s seniors got the health care they needed to live long, healthy lives.

The American Associated of Retired Persons (AARP) said the Ryan Plan’s changes to Medicare “would simply shift these costs onto the backs of people in Medicare. It would undermine Medicare’s promise of secure health coverage—a guarantee that future seniors have contributed to through a lifetime of hard work.”

When the Republicans tried to partially privatize Social Security under President Bush, I fought them every step of the way because Social Security is a valuable program that keeps half of all seniors out of poverty. Now that the Republicans are coming after Medicare, I will fight their efforts once again. I want to trim our deficits and return to the days of balanced budgets more than anyone else, but not on the backs of our seniors who did nothing to get us into this mess in the first place.

The federal budget is about more than just dollars and cents. It is a statement of our values and priorities. My priority is and has always been protecting Arkansas’s seniors and that’s what I’ll continue to do as Congressman for Arkansas’s Fourth Congressional District.