Senator Bob Corker, R-Tn., took to the Senate floor Wednesday to express his disappointment that the health care bill before the Senate would take “$464 billion in savings out of Medicare to leverage a new entitlement.” Sen. Corker’s floor remarks follow.

“We have before us one of the most important issues that we will deal with in this body. I’ve had over 40 town hall-like meetings since the beginning of August, and I can say without hesitation that I have never used those meetings to try to focus on some of the hot-button issues that divide us in this country. On not one occasion have I tried to do that. I have tried to focus on the fundamentals of this health care bill.

“Way back when I began meeting with the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee (Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mt.), and I greatly appreciated his desire to meet with me, and realized that Medicare may be a place where money will be taken to leverage a new entitlement, I began expressing my concerns about that. Later, I sent a letter to Majority Leader Reid, signed by 36 senators, talking about the fact if Medicare moneys were used to leverage a new entitlement, we could not support that effort.

"The reason I say this is that this is the same exact thing I have been saying about this bill from day one, before it was ever constructed. I’m very dismayed that we find ourselves here in December debating a bill that does exactly that.

“When I first came to this body there was a lot of concern in this body about the solvency of Medicare. I think everyone here knows that the trustees have stated that in 2017 Medicare will be absolutely insolvent. Two senators from opposite sides of the aisle have tried to create legislation that would put in place a commission – eight Republicans, eight Democrats – to actually solve that issue because we realize that we do not have the resources in Medicare to actually deal with the liabilities that we have with seniors all across this country.

“The fact that we are taking $464 billion in savings out of Medicare to leverage a new entitlement, to me, is totally irresponsible. This is the same thing I’ve been saying from day one. I’m dismayed that we in this body would consider kicking the can down the road, making sure that...the Senate pages that are helping us here on the floor today will be straddled with huge amounts of cost down the road. So, I am very discouraged.

“The other piece of this that is extremely troubling is that we all know we have the issue of S.G.R. (Sustainable Growth Rate), the “doc fix,” which is a colloquial term to describe the fact that in a year after this bill passes physicians across this country will be receiving a 23 percent cut for serving Medicare recipients. I think that Medicare recipients understand what that means. It means recipients will have less physicians to deal with the needs they’re going to have at that time. This bill, instead of dealing with that issue, deals with it for one year. That means there's about $250 billion worth of expenses that are not being dealt with, with this Medicare savings.

“Let me walk through it one more time. We have a program that is insolvent. We have a program that cannot meet the needs of those people who have paid into this program for years and that many of us continue to pay into. This program is insolvent, and we’re going to take moneys out of this program, $464 billion, something that most Americans cannot do, something that does not pass the commonsense test in Tennessee. My guess is it doesn’t pass the commonsense test in most states around this country. We’re going to take $464 billion out of this program, this entitlement, which is underfunded and insolvent, and we're going to leverage it to create a new entitlement for Americans across this country.

“And yet, we’re not going to deal with the issue of the doc fix, which is a $250 billion issue. We’re going to kick the can down the road. We’re going to...possibly end up with a $250 billion obligation that could have been dealt with during this health care reform that now is not met, that is going to create additional fiscal burdens for this country and certainly great distress to seniors and physicians who care for seniors.

“Again, I’ve tried to stick with the basic fundamental building blocks of this bill. I don’t think anybody in this body has ever heard me focus on some of the more emotional issues. The fact that we would use Medicare moneys to create a new entitlement, the fact that we would have an unfunded mandate to states through Medicaid of $25 billion, to me, is problematic. The fact that premiums are actually going to increase, whether it’s a CBO (Congressional Budget Office) number of 10 percent to 13 percent or the Oliver Wyman number in my state which says 60 percent, the fact is that private premiums are going to go up. And fifthly, the fact that we’re using six years’ worth of costs and ten years’ worth of revenues.

“I don’t know how we’ve gotten caught up in this debate in such a manner that we are ignoring basic fundamentals that I don't think any of us on our own accord would consider supporting. The fact is that I’m afraid that this, again, has become nothing but seen as a political victory for the president. What I hope we will do is step back and do some things in a bipartisan way that will stand the test of time. I ran on health care reform. I’d like to see us do responsible health care reform. The basic fundamentals of this bill do not meet that test.”