[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 97 (Friday, July 22, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               A PROPOSAL FOR THE HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL

  (Mr. GINGRICH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, there is a very alarming story in the 
Washington Post this morning about how the Democratic leadership is 
trying to write the health bill.
  Apparently in a series of meetings at the White House and a series of 
meetings with different groups of Members, the Democratic leadership is 
trying to draft a bill which will be dramatically different from the 
bills already written in the Committee on Ways and Means and the 
Committee on Education and Labor.
  I know, from having cochaired the health task force on the Republican 
side since July 1991, that health care is a very complicated issue. It 
affects the lives of every American.
  I think it is guaranteed to have major mistakes if this bill is 
written in secret, brought to the floor at the last minute, and rammed 
through by a political machine without hearings, without understanding, 
without a chance to clarify things.
  So I want to make the following proposition to the Democratic 
leadership: If they cannot produce, as the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. 
Michel] and I have asked in a letter, a copy of the legislative 
language of their bill at least 10 days before they plan to vote on it, 
I propose that the Democratic leadership, the single-payer group, and 
the bipartisan group working on a bill produce a bill before the August 
recess, and that we vote on it the first week we come back in 
September.

                          ____________________