[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 85 (Wednesday, June 29, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 29, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                             PARTISAN DELAY

  (Mr. MICHEL asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. MICHEL. Mr. Speaker, who wants to be partisan, and who wants to 
find a bipartisan solution to health care? Who wants action now, and 
who wants to delay action?
  Apparently Chairman John Dingell has given up on getting a 
commonsense health care bill out of his committee because he cannot 
find enough Democrats to support the President's bill. Sadly, he has 
decided to blame Republicans for his own failure.
  I suggest to the chairman that he look in the mirror if he wants to 
find the real reason why he could not get a health care plan through 
the committee. After all, Republicans were willing to support the 
Rowland-Bilirakis bill, the only bipartisan proposal that could have 
served as a starting point. But the chairman rejected it out of hand. 
And, worse, I understand the Democrats have been working feverishly 
overnight to retreat from the first step to health care now that we 
adopted yesterday in the Committee of the Whole on the Health and Human 
Services appropriation bill.
  We passed the Porter amendment, which greatly expanded community 
health centers in rural areas. Now the Democratic leadership wants to 
revote this amendment to kill this first step to health care reform. I 
think that is absolutely outrageous. I want to commend those 53 
Democrats who joined with us in that positive vote yesterday. And to 
have the pressure applied to reverse yourselves when we go back into 
the House I think is outrageous.
  Mr. Speaker, it is quite obvious who wants to be partisan and who 
wants to delay commonsense health care reform. I suggest maybe the 
Democratic leadership ought to be ashamed of itself.

                          ____________________