Community Corner

DeLauro Talks Benefits With State's Seniors

Says Republican-backed budget proposal endangers Medicare and Medicaid.

The national debate over Medicare and the federal deficit came to the Baldwin Senior Center in Stratford on Wednesday morning with U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, appearing at a town hall-style meeting before more than 50 seniors.

DeLauro and Brad Plebani, deputy director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy, said a federal budget play put forth by Republican Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin would gut Medicare in the future, and would harm Medicaid recipients as early as next year.

"If it passes, the [Ryan] budget for 2010 seeks to end Medicare as we know it, transforming it into a voucher system and shifting thousands of dollars in additional costs onto every senior," DeLauro said.

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Plebani called Ryan's Medicare proposal the worst he has seen in 24 years with the center.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, have said they would oppose any deal with Democrats to raise the nation's debt ceiling without significant cuts to or restructuring of entitlement programs like Medicare. 

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But DeLauro and Plebani said the plan currently backed by many House Republicans would replace a guaranteed level of medical services with a voucher that seniors would use to buy insurance in the private market.

It also would replace Medicare with block grants to be administered by the states, they said. Plebani said some services for which seniors now pay 20 to 25 percent of the cost could rise to 65 percent by 2022.

DeLauro said many programs that now are free for seniors, such as mammograms, colonoscopies and other preventive care measures, would be eliminated.

"Governing is about choices," DeLauro said. "Everyone in Congress agrees that we need to bring down the deficit and cut programs that do not work. The question before us is how we decide to get there."

DeLauro said she would start with cuts to $4 billion in oil company subsidies; reassessing subsidies to large corporate farming operations ("Not like the small family farms we have here in Connecticut,") and ending the so-called Bush income tax cuts on people making more than $250,000 per year.

Several residents also inquired about Social Security issues.

"I've been paying into Social Security for 65 years because I own a business," said James Marbury. "Now I get taxed on that Social Security. And I'm reading they are thinking of reducing benefits."

While DeLauro said she does not favor increasing the retirement age from 65 to 67, David Traverso, a retired actuary, said such a move would be a minor one and could shore up Social Security.

"Back when they started Social Security, if you lived to 65 for a man or 62 for a woman, you generally had only two to seven years to collect it," he said. "People are living longer now."

DeLauro said she prefers raising the existing cap that collects Social Security taxes on only the first $120,000 of annual income.

Resident Delores Stevens said combinations of cuts could help out, singling out foreign aid.

"We give billions of dollars to our supposed friends," Stevens said, specifically mentioning Pakistan. "That money would help solve the deficit."

DeLauro said that foreign aid, for example, makes up only about one percent of the federal budget. She did not answer directly when asked if her proposals, such as oil subsidies and tax increases, also would amount only to nibbling around the edges without serious entitlement reforms.

"Social Security isn't the reason we are in deficit," DeLauro said. "That is largely because of two unfunded wars, tax breaks for the rich and an unfunded Medicare drug prescription program [initiated by President George W. Bush].

"Yes, other things have contributed," she added. "But those are the main drivers of the deficit."

DeLauro said afterward that she does not believe that President Barack Obama would sign the so-called Ryan budget if it got to his desk. But she also does not want to take for granted that the measure would be dead on arrival in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

"I'll believe it's dead on arrival if it happens," she said.

DeLauro also sides with those saying some sort of agreement on increasing the debt ceiling, due to be reached within days, is necessary, even with some saying a technical default would not be as hazardous to the U.S. economy as claimed.

"I've heard that. I've also heard people saying it would be a catastrophe," she said. "Do we want to risk that?"

The nation does not, she concluded.


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