[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 24 (Tuesday, March 8, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 8, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
        URGING LEADERSHIP TO ABANDON SECRET HEALTH CARE PROCESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Margolies-Mezvinsky). Under the 
Speaker's announced policy of February 11, 1994, the gentleman from 
Georgia [Mr. Gingrich] is recognized during morning business for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. GINGRICH. Madam Speaker, I rise today to urge the Democratic 
leadership here in the House to abandon the health care process that I 
believe has started this morning in the subcommittee of the gentleman 
from California [Mr. Stark].
  Let me report to my colleagues that my understanding is that with the 
public Clinton plan now dead, because the public has rejected it so 
decisively, there is now a secret Clinton plan. Nobody knows what it 
is, including, I think, the Democratic leadership, but they have 
decided that they cannot pass anything out of the subcommittee of the 
Committee on Energy and Commerce, so they are going to try to go to the 
full Committee on Energy and Commerce.
  They have decided that the bill they are going to mark up today in 
the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Ways and Means probably 
will not be the bill that they will mark up in the full Committee on 
Ways and Means. They have decided, according to some newspapers this 
weekend, that if they cannot get anything out of the Committee on 
Energy and Commerce, they will simply take the Committee on Ways and 
Means bill to the Committee on Rules, and sometime around May or June 
write another bill in the Committee on Rules, bring that to the floor, 
then they will try to get that bill to go to conference.
  Then, with almost no time left at the end of the session in September 
or October, they will rush a thousand-page bill to the floor. They will 
attempt to pass a secret Clinton plan that nobody will have read, 
nobody will understand. It will be filled with massive mistakes, 
because just as the 500 people in the secret meetings in the White 
House were incapable of writing a health plan for 260 million 
Americans, we will discover that the 60 or 70 staff in secret meetings 
in the Congress are going to be incapable of writing a health plan for 
260 million Americans.
  We had a Republican retreat in Annapolis on Thursday and Friday of 
Senate Members, House Members, and Governors. I want to report to my 
colleagues that on the Republican side, we would like to reach out to 
write a bipartisan health bill in public, where people can see the 
product. We would like to use the normal committee and subcommittee 
process.
  We would like to allow the American people to see the bill that we 
are drafting. We would like it to be done in an adult, orderly, 
commonsense manner, that people can see what the city of Washington is 
trying to do to their health and their health care, their choice of a 
doctor and their choice of a hospital, and their pocketbook.
  I just want to report to every Democrat in this House, on the 
Republican side we are prepared to sit down this afternoon on a 
bipartisan basis to write a health bill. We think it is important for 
America that it not pass by 218 partisan votes, as the tax increase did 
last year. We think it is important for America that there be a broad, 
bipartisan coalition working together in public, with public 
accountability, so that together we can write a good bill.

                              {time}  1040

  We think it would start with things like medical savings accounts, 
with malpractice reform, with group insurance for small business. We 
think that it is possible to write a good bill. We think we can outlaw 
preconditions so every American can buy insurance. We believe we can 
guarantee portability so Americans can switch jobs without losing their 
insurance. But we believe public trust, particularly in the light of 
everything which has happened recently, that public trust can only be 
reestablished by a bipartisan effort in public to write a bill where 
the people have a chance to examine it, and I would beg the Democratic 
leadership, back off from this series of one-sided, one-party secret 
efforts leading to I think a bad bill with bad consequences.

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