Sessions-Ryan Letter to Obama: Where’s YOUR Medicare Bill?
House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Sessions sent a letter to President Obama today pointing out that the President is violating the law by failing to submit Medicare reform legislation to Congress. Last month, the Medicare trustees issued their fifth straight funding warning, showing that the Medicare program is taking a disproportionate share of its funding from general revenues, thus crowding out programs like defense and education. While in theory this development should prompt the President to follow his statutory requirement to submit legislation remedying this funding shortfall, the White House has steadfastly refused to do so – relying instead on a signing statement by President Bush to ignore the need for Medicare reform.
As a reminder, the President’s deficit reduction “plan” calls for a deficit “fail-safe” requiring additional action if the budget situation does not improve. But Medicare ALREADY has such a “fail-safe,” and the President has scrupulously ignored it. If the President is so interested in budgetary “fail-safes” as a way to reduce the federal deficit, why doesn’t he abide by the Medicare “fail-safe” that’s already in law – a “fail-safe” he has completely ignored?
After promising during his presidential campaign that he would NOT use presidential signing statements to “get [his] way,” President Obama is now relying on a signing statement to avoid putting forward concrete proposals for Medicare reform – effectively attempting to get his way by avoiding the big issues of entitlement reform 18 months before his re-election bid. But, with federal deficits running at record highs, some may wonder whether ducking on the biggest issue of our generation – massive and unsustainable federal debts sparked largely by uncontrolled entitlements – represents the kind of change the American people can believe in.