By Peter Wong
When U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader walked into the room earlier this week (Monday, April 30) at Dallas Retirement Village, he knew he would get questions from the audience of about 40 — mostly older people — about the future of Medicare, Social Security and the mounting federal debt.
The two-term Democrat from Canby who represents the 5th District was ready. He’s been talking about those issues for awhile.
“He talked about some unpopular things,” saud David Parnett, executive director of the village.
But Schrader has been at the forefront of a small (but he hopes growing) group of Democrats and Republicans in Congress to forge a path between their parties’ leaders and come up with a way to resolve the looming federal budget crisis. Yes, only 38 votes were cast March 28 for their proposal, which follows the lines of a bipartisan commission led by Alan Simpson, former Republican senator from Wyoming, and Erskine Bowles, former White House chief of staff for Democratic President Bill Clinton (known as Simpson-Bowles). The Republican majority in the U.S. House prompted voted it down before adopting their party’s budget proposal, which will go nowhere in a Senate with a Democratic majority.
Simpson-Bowles proposes both restraints/cuts in future spending and repeal of many tax breaks to raise tax collections. Democrats raise questions about the former, Republicans the latter.
Schrader, who was one of the 38, thinks his colleagues may eventually come along after they give it more consideration. That could happen after the Nov. 6 election, when a two-year extension of Bush-era tax cuts expires and automatic cuts in domestic and federal spending kick in. The cuts were triggered when a congressional panel failed to reach an agreement last year, but the start date for them is January 2013.
“People in Main Street America, whether they are in high school or assisted-living facilities, are light-years ahead of the politicians,” Schrader said after a presentation during which he laid out alternatives for Medicare, the federal program of health insurance for people 65 and older.
One choice is to do nothing; program trustees have already warned (April 23) there will be insufficient funds by 2024. Another choice is essentially to issue vouchers, under which the government pays a fixed amount to recipients who shop for their own coverage. The third option covers a variety of actions: Recipients pay more, and providers root out wasteful costs, such as those for medically unjustifiable tests and treatments.
Schrader said most of his listeners chose the third.
“Medicare and Social Security are in trouble,” he said afterward. “Either we can dodge the bullet just to get re-elected, or we can address the issues with their help. A little change now saves us a lot of pain later.”
Trustees say Social Security has more time — to 2033, if both disability insurance (2016) and retirement funds (2036) are combined. But that 2033 date is three years earlier than was projected last year.
Schrader has been making the rounds with a set presentation, some of it from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Schrader himself was a three-session Senate co-chairman of the Oregon Legislature’s budget committee.
“I think people need to know what’s going on,” he said. “The least they can expect from us, besides infighting, is to get some decent information out there.”
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