[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 84 (Tuesday, June 28, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 28, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                NO MORE SECRET HEALTH CARE REFORM PLANS

  (Mr. WALKER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WALKER. Mr. Speaker, what is clear about the health care plan is 
that the longer it sticks around and people get to understand it, the 
more they get unhappy about what the Clinton plan is all about. What we 
know about the Clinton plan, Mr. Speaker, is it was written in secret 
by Mrs. Clinton's operation that went behind closed doors and drafted 
this health care plan, and after middle-class America became familiar 
with it, they decided that it was not exactly what they wanted in order 
to get reform.
  Now what we find, Mr. Speaker, is that the Democratic leadership of 
the House of Representatives is about to pull the same thing, that once 
they get a bill out of the Committee on Education and Labor and one out 
of the Committee on Ways and Means, they are likely to go behind closed 
doors of the Committee on Rules and try to write a plan that also 
includes the Committee on Energy and Commerce, that cannot get one out 
of its own committee.
  What we are going to have, Mr. Speaker, is another plan drafted in 
secret, and then there is going to be a hope that nobody will really 
know what is in it by the time we pass it. Mr. Speaker, that is what we 
cannot have happen. Middle-class America wants whatever health care 
plan emerges written in public, with the press present and with 
everybody understanding what the details of the plan are. Secret plans 
to reform 14 percent of the GNP and also to do something that will 
affect the lives of every American are not right. No health care plan 
should be written in secret.

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