[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]

 
        GIVING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE A VOICE IN THEIR HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. 
Gingrich] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, I want to speak today on giving the 
American people a voice in their health care.
  It is increasingly obvious, as I alluded in the earlier discussion 
with the majority leader in discussing the schedule, that we are 
running out of time to write, expose to the public, debate, and pass a 
health care bill before the August recess. Currently the House is to 
recess on August 12, a Friday.
  Now, that means if we worked all of next week in writing a bill, if 
the legislative staffs were to work all weekend, and these are very 
complex bills running 1,500 pages, that we would only have from Monday, 
August 1, to Friday, August 12, to look at the bill if, in fact, it was 
released.
  Now, I do not believe that schedule will be kept. I do not believe it 
is technically possible to get the bills agreed to, drafted, and 
produced in final form by August 1.
  So what normally happens in the House, and I have seen this happen on 
major bill after major bill, deals are done, final agreements are made, 
rewrites are ordered, something is printed up and Xeroxed, and it comes 
to the floor at the last minute. Members do not have time to read it. 
Experts do not have time to read it. The country does not know what is 
in it.
  And then we are told, ``You must vote now.''
  Well, I want to propose today a much better procedure. I want to 
suggest to the Democratic leadership that if they cannot get their bill 
written, if the Clinton bill that will be offered by the Democratic 
leadership cannot be printed by August 1, that rather than try to rush 
this through, that we take a step to reestablish the dignity and the 
integrity of the House by bringing to the floor a rule on August 11 or 
12 which will make in order two votes, the Clinton bill and a 
bipartisan bill.

                              {time}  1450

  Pass the rule which will lock the two rules in, have the Government 
Printing Office print the two bills in sufficient numbers that anyone 
who wants to read them can read them, and then go on recess from August 
12 until Labor Day; allow the American people to read both bills, allow 
people to compare the two bills, allow them to talk with their Members 
who will be back home, allow them to have a chance to make their voice 
heard, to speak out.
  And let me say I am so confident of the comparison between the 
bipartisan bill and the Clinton bill that I would invite the President 
to come to my district to stand side by side and let us compare the two 
bills during August and let the people see both choices during August. 
And I would be delighted for the President to make his case and I would 
be glad to make the case for a bipartisan bill and let people then 
choose and have a sense of what is in them. And then the very first 
week we come back, let us have a vote.
  But let me say I was led to make this speech because of articles 
today in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the 
Washington Post.
  The New York Times reports on page 1 an article entitled ``Health 
Care Bills Bring Benefits for Some Specific Constituents.'' That is, 
the same old one-sided pork-barrel insider deal is coming down the road 
on health.
  Let me quote from this, an article by Robert Pear of the New York 
Times:

       A hospital in Representative Dan Rostenkowski's 
     neighborhood in Chicago is getting Federal aid for a $580 
     million construction project. Representative Charles B. 
     Rangel has secured similar assistance for a hospital on the 
     upper east side of Manhattan. And Representative Barbara B. 
     Kennelly of Connecticut has obtained special dispensation for 
     the Hartford Life Insurance Company.
       Those are a few of the little-noticed provisions tucked 
     into health care legislation for the benefit of specific 
     hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies.
       The highly contentious health care bills moving through 
     Congress are chock-full of such narrowly focused provisions, 
     and they illustrate how shrewd lobbyists or sympathetic 
     Members of Congress on strategically important committees try 
     to write law for clients and constituents.

  Let me make clear what has happened: In the Committee on Ways and 
Means, marking up the Clinton health program, in the middle of a 
massive effort to increase the Government's control over health care, 
hospitals and insurance companies and drug companies who had the right 
person on the committee wrote in their particular special provision.
  So the things that might affect everybody else in America will not 
affect them. So that they will not pay the same taxes or they will not 
pay the same drop-in cost of benefits or they will not be taken care of 
like everybody else; they will get a special deal.
  You will notice that it has taken even a publication as sophisticated 
as the New York Times several weeks to go through 1,500 pages to find 
these little goodies.
  Now, it is wrong, and it is wrong for us to have a bill that affects 
the life and death of every American, and it is wrong for us to have a 
bill which will affect 14 percent of our gross national product, the 
largest bill of economic impact in history goes through this House 
without having time to study it and without having independent experts 
to analyze it.
  And yet this is a pattern. Let me quote further from the New York 
Times:

       Michael D. Bromberg, executive director of the Federation 
     of American Health Systems, a trade group for 1,400 
     hospitals, said the manipulation of Federal largess would 
     become more common if the Government gained control over a 
     larger share of the Nation's health spending.
       ``Once you give Congress the power to play with a trillion 
     dollars a year, it will be tempted to shift money around in 
     pork-barrel fashion,'' he said.
       And there may be unforeseen consequences. ``If you do a 
     special deal for hospital A,'' said Mr. Bromberg, ``hospital 
     B across the street will be hurt.''

  So this is not just taking care of friends but it is taking care of 
friends in a way which lowers their costs so they can put out of 
business some other hospital which does not have a political protector, 
which is not taken care of by some powerful politician.
  Let me go further, from the New York Times:

       This provision, sought by Mr. Rostenkowski, would make 
     Federal aid available only for construction projects that 
     cost $500 million or more, were approved before June 1, 1994, 
     and will be finished by December 31, 2002. In practice, it 
     benefits only a small number of hospitals.

  The paper goes on to say that,

       One institution that would qualify for the interest rate 
     subsidies is Northwestern Memorial Hospital in downtown 
     Chicago, which has a $580 million project to replace most of 
     its existing beds. Joseph K. Dowley, a Washington lobbyist 
     who was chief counsel of the Ways and Means Committee from 
     1985 to 1987, helped Northwestern land this prize.
       Another beneficiary of the same provision is New York 
     Hospital, on the upper east side, which has an $820 million 
     project. New York Hospital got assistance from Mr. Rangel, a 
     Manhattan Democrat who serves on the Ways and Means 
     Committee, and from Mr. William Signer, a lobbyist who used 
     to work for Mr. Rangel.

  Now, this kind of relationship of the former staffer back to the 
specialized committee to get a special deal for one institution is 
exactly what makes America mad. But I want to raise the warning that a 
bill brought to the floor without adequate scrutiny, a bill brought to 
the floor without adequate public involvement, a bill brought to the 
floor quickly without anybody having had a chance to look at it and 
take it apart, that kind of bill is going to be filled with these 
special deals. What does it mean?
  It means every other hospital in Chicago has a higher cost of its new 
beds than does the one hospital that got its special deal. It means 
that every other hospital in New York is going to have a higher cost of 
its beds than the one hospital that got a special deal.
  But it is not just hospitals.
  Let me read further from the New York Times, and I quote:

       Here are other provisions that address the concerns of 
     specific constituents: Hartford Insurance. All the major 
     health care bills would establish Federal standards for 
     private health insurance. Insurers could not cancel or deny 
     coverage for a person who became sick or had an illness or 
     disability, and they would have to offer a standard package 
     of health benefits to all applicants.
       In general, the bill says, ``A carrier may not refuse to 
     enroll, refuse to renew the enrollment of, or terminate the 
     enrollment of, an individual or employer in an insured health 
     benefit plan.'' But there is an exception for companies 
     leaving the health insurance business, ``pursuant to a 
     joint marketing agreement entered into prior to January 1, 
     1994.''
       That obscurely worded provision applies to only one case: 
     Hartford Life Insurance Companies, subsidiaries of the ITT 
     Corporation, is leaving the health insurance market and 
     transferring most of its group-medical business to the 
     Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company of Springfield, 
     Massachusetts, which uses the trademark MassMutual.
       John E. Shelk, federal affairs counsel for the ITT Hartford 
     Insurance Group, a unit of the ITT Corporation, said he had 
     secured this provision after laying out his concerns to Mrs. 
     Kennelly, a Democrat from Hartford, who is a member of the 
     Ways and Means Committee.
       ``We are fortunate that our congresswoman is on the 
     committee,'' said Mr. Shelk. ``She did a good job and helped 
     us get a technical clarifying amendment.''

  Well, it would be terrific if every American and every business and 
every insurance company and every hospital had somebody on the Ways and 
Means Committee to write in their particular special interests. But 
what you are going to get, when the effort comes down to passing a bill 
and the Democratic leadership recognizes that the Clinton bill will not 
pass in a straight up, open public policy issue-oriented bill is you 
suddenly get special deals. For example, one particular company, a drug 
company, got a special deal which will lower for it the amount it has 
to cut the cost of its drugs to Medicare by 50 percent. That is, other 
drug companies on other drugs will have a 50 percent higher rebate from 
Medicare than this one company. This company was very lucky. It had a 
member on the Ways and Means Committee who wrote in a special bill.
  Or consider this problem: Group Health Inc., a company in New York 
State of doctors and hospitals, competes aggressively with Blue Cross 
and Blue Shield. So it enlisted the help of Geraldine A. Ferraro, and I 
will quote from the New York Times:

       So it enlisted the help of Geraldine A. Ferraro, the former 
     New York congresswoman. They persuaded the Ways and Means 
     Committee to stipulate, as part of the health care bill, that 
     Group Health shall be treated the same as a Blue Cross and 
     Blue Shield organization in the future and for tax years back 
     to 1987.

                              {time}  1500

  The Senate Finance Committee approved a similar provision, close 
quote, and of course the Senate Finance Committee is chaired by a 
Senator from New York. But notice what this does. Of all the insurance 
companies competing in New York State, the only insurance opportunity 
which will get the same tax treatment as Blue Cross and Blue Shield is 
Group Health. No other insurance company in that competitive market 
will have the same tax advantage, and notice they do not just get it 
for the future. If this bill passes, they get it for the last 7 years, 
and one of the question I will be submitting to the Committee on Ways 
and Means is to know how many dollars will this one provision benefit 
that one special interest? How much will the rest of America have to 
pay in extra taxes--now this is a Congress Member which retroactively 
raised taxes last year, and now they are going to give a retroactive 
tax cut for the last 7 years to a firm smart enough to have hired a 
former Vice Presidential candidate as their advocate.
  There are other examples of what is going wrong. Paul Gigot in a very 
powerful column this morning in the Wall Street Journal entitled, 
quote, ``What Universal Coverage Really Means to You''--this is what 
Paul Gigot writes:

       President Clinton may not know what universal coverage 
     means, but Dan Rostenkowski certainly does, the former Ways 
     and Means chairman of the University of Chicago. And coverage 
     means a 3-percent interest rate subsidy to help Northwestern 
     Memorial Hospital with its $630 million construction program. 
     Rosty managed to slip that lapidary, multimillion-dollar 
     freebie into the 1500-page ways and means health bill.

  Now notice what we are talking about here is 1,500 pages that have 
not had a single day of public hearings, that have not had experts read 
them, and remember this is only one bill. This is the Ways and Means 
bill. There is a second 1,200-page bill from the Committee on Education 
and Labor. The Democratic leadership is now trying to take all these 
pages, and they are trying to politically put together a pork barrel 
special which they can write in a closed room, rush to the floor before 
anyone has read it, and try to squeeze enough Democrats to vote for it.
  Let me go a stage further. And this is what is wrong about the way 
Washington is working today, and I want to read these two paragraphs 
about the sellout of American doctors by the American Medical 
Association. This is what Paul Gigot writes.

       To the American Medical Association meanwhile universal 
     coverage means a congressional vote to exempt doctors from 
     antitrust laws. That is what everyone here assumes is the 
     AMA's expectation, if not explicitly its price in return for 
     joining the AFL-CIO this week in endorsing use of universal 
     coverage and the employer tax to pay for it. Right now 
     doctors cannot collude on prices unless they share risk, as 
     in a clinic, but if government is going to set America's 
     health care budget, the doctors' lobby wants doctors to be 
     able to fix their own, too. I am told the AMA chief 
     negotiator really is not Dr. Faustus, but I wonder.

  Let me say I have yet to have a single doctor in my district come to 
see me and say that their No. 1 goal is to be in alliance with the AFL-
CIO to get government-controlled health insurance. Every doctor I have 
talked to in my district is angry at the American Medical Association 
because its Washington lobbyists are selling out the doctors on behalf 
of some kind of Washington deal cut in a back room. So, if the average 
doctor got a chance to read this bill, my guess is they would want new 
representation from the AMA to replace what has been done to their 
association, which is, in fact, caving to the back room Washington 
power structure.
  But let me go a step further and read Paul Gigot further. Quote:
  ``Isn't last-minute legislating fun? Here in health care's final 
bacchanal universal coverage has become whatever gets Democrats 280 
votes in the House and 50 plus Al Gore in the Senate. Raw self-interest 
rules the day.''
  Let me repeat that because I think Paul Gigot caught what we are 
going to see over the next 3 weeks in its absolute closest form. Quote: 
``Raw self-interest rules the day,'' close quote.
  Now frankly this is bad legislation. We normally expect a fair amount 
of pork barrel, we normally expect a fair amount of things to go on, 
but we are talking about a bill which is designed to give the American 
people a radically different approach to health, to transfer the power 
of their health care over to the government, to raise their taxes, to 
change the entire structure of health to affect the life and death of 
every American, and it is being done, as Paul Gigot says, with raw 
self-interest and with political power. But let me carry on further in 
the column.
  Principle and policy sense, if they ever existed, have vanished in 
the mad scramble to cobble together enough votes for liberal Democrats 
to claim another historic expansion of the welfare state. These are the 
same liberals, by the way, who bemoan the declining prestige of 
government. It is all remarkable specially because never in American 
history has one party attempted to make so much social policy with so 
little support. The Clintons like to compare their effort to Social 
Security and Medicare, but those were military parades compared with 
this political riot.
  On April 5, 1935, the Committee on Ways and Means passed Social 
Security 17 to 0 with 17 Republicans abstaining. It passed the full 
House 372 to 33. Thirty years later, on March 23, 1965, the Committee 
on Ways and Means passed Medicare 17 to 8. It passed the House 313 to 
115. Both programs succeeded in the first year of a historically 
liberal Congress.
  Let me make this point here:
  Notice the margins, 17 to zero in the Committee on Ways and Means, 17 
to 8 in the Committee on Ways and Means. That is for Social Security 
and Medicare. Notice that both came after landslide presidential 
victories. Franklin Roosevelt was elected by a huge margin in 1932. 
Lyndon Johnson was elected by a huge margin. In 1992 we had a split 
election with a minority President getting 43 percent of the vote. 
There is no mandate for social engineering to turn America's health 
care over to the government.
  Now let me go on to quote from Paul Gigot:

       In 1994 Democrats again have huge majorities, but nothing 
     like a national consensus reflected in wide victory margins. 
     A Clinton-like plan passed Ways and Means with only the 
     barest majority, 20 to 18, and then only this month, with 
     just weeks left in the second year of the most liberal 
     Congress since the 1960s.

  Notice in the Committee on Ways and Means, after taking care of 
everybody with all the special interests that the New York Times 
reports on this morning, they could only get a 20 to 18 majority.
  Gigot goes on to say:

       Every poll shows support for anything like ClintonCare down 
     near 40 percent. The Clintonians claim weakness as strength.
       Going from 55 percent to 42 percent is no big deal, said 
     presidential pollster Dan Greenberg last week. The voters 
     have merely been gulled by critics. Yet there was another 
     Democratic test done in California in 1992 when a Clinton-
     like plan with an employer mandate ran as a ballot 
     proposition. It lost by more than two to one in the same year 
     Mr. Clinton carried the State easily.

  Let me drive home this point.
  The President of the United States, President Clinton, came to this 
building, stood in this House in September of last year and outlined 
his plan. When the people first heard about it, they sort of liked it. 
It was at about 55 percent approval. Week by week, month by month, 
there have been hearings, there have been speeches. Mrs. Clinton has 
been on Good Morning America for 2 hours with no one to answer her. NBC 
spent 2 hours in a shamelessly one-sided propaganda piece. The weight 
of barrage has been overwhelming, and with every passing day more 
Americans are opposed to the Clinton plan, and more Americans want the 
Congress to do something different. Today 55 percent of the country is 
opposed to the Clinton plan, and about 40 percent favors it. So, by 
public polling, after having now 9 months of speeches, and advertising, 
and public affairs, and hearings, by 55 to 40 the country rejects it, 
and the only vote that has been taken on a mandate in California, it 
lost by two to one.
  Now, what has happened? As the plan breaks down, every powerful 
Democratic politician looks for little ways to get more goodies to take 
care of their own. For example, the Senate bill now has a 1.75 percent 
tax on insurance premiums. That is every American who has insurance in 
the country will pay a tax of 1.75 percent which will go to academic 
medical centers, which argues what? Most of them are in New York.

                              {time}  1510

  So the New York Senator adds a tax to every American to send money to 
New York. And that is in the bill coming out of the Senate, or at least 
coming out of the Finance Committee.
  But it goes deeper. The fact is, we do not know what is going on. Let 
me quote from Paul Gigot:

       No one knows how much this little beauty will cost, but a 
     spokesman for the Senator says that $40 billion over 5 years 
     is probably in the ballpark.

  Think about that. Here is a brand new tax on every American who has 
insurance, every American is going to have a tax increase of 1.75 
percent on their insurance. They don't even know what it is going to 
raise. They don't have a clue, because they are moving so fast, they 
are trying to get this bill through before anybody can read it, that 
nobody has even made the calculations. So maybe it is $40 billion.
  Now, is that any way to handle the Nation's health, to deal with a 
bill that covers every American?
  But Mr. Gigot goes further. When asked during a Senate Finance 
Committee markup about the cost of another provision, he replied in 
what ought to be the epitaph for this entire debate, ``I don't believe 
we have the least idea.''
  Notice, let me repeat that, because it is so wild. When asked how 
much something would cost, the answer was ``I don't believe we have the 
least idea.''
  Now, if that is true in a committee markup, what is the truth going 
to be about some bill written in a back room by the Democratic 
leadership to prepare a Clinton administration proposal for the House 
floor?
  The truth is, we are not going to have any idea what it costs. We are 
not going to have any idea whether it is technically right or what 
loopholes exist or what pork barrel is involved, if it is rushed to the 
floor.
  Finally, to quote Paul Gigot one last time:

       All of this is more than the NAFTA type logrolling. Opening 
     up health care choices to politicians is in fact what the 
     Clinton plan is all about. Congress suddenly gets vast new 
     power to decide what is covered and what isn't, who gets 
     subsidies and who doesn't. The Members get vast new clout.

  Now, what that means is the more you put health care in Washington, 
the more you take it away from the American people's own choices, the 
more difficult it is going to be for us to be in a position for you to 
have control, because power will shift to Washington, and in 
Washington, you are going to see an awful lot of logrolling and an 
awful lot of corruption.

  Now, the fact is that at the present time, there is no bill in either 
the House or Senate which is the Clinton final version. There is no 
bill which has been scored by the Congressional Budget Office which 
could come to the floor. There is no bill which has been drafted.
  In fact, the resistance to a Clinton bill is so great that 
apparently, according to the Washington Post, page 1 story, the 
Democratic leadership had to go down to the White House last night and 
admit that they could not put together a bill. This is what the 
Washington Post reports this morning:
       Democrats Plan Longer Phase-In To Full Coverage--Leaders 
     Try ``New Approach'' In Health Reform Strategy
       Democratic congressional leaders told President Clinton 
     last night that they will write new health care legislation 
     that will phase in universal coverage over a longer period 
     than the White House wants and with a ``bureaucratic 
     approach,'' officials said.
       The statement by the leaders and explanations by White 
     House officials indicate an acceptance of the reality that 
     there are not enough votes to pass Clinton's plan. But Senate 
     Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Maine), House Speaker 
     Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), and House Majority Leader Richard 
     A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) said the president and Democratic 
     leadership remain committed to covering all Americans and 
     continue to believe that some sort of system that requires 
     individuals, businesses or a combination to provide 
     insurance, will be at least the House legislation.
       Harold Ickes, deputy chief of staff at the White House and 
     coordinator of health care policy, said last night that the 
     leaders told the president, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton 
     and their senior advisers that after assessing voter 
     preferences and the votes in Congress, they were committed to 
     coming up with ``a new approach'' in a new spirit.

  Let me stop for a second. It says, understand this, with 3 weeks to 
go, the Democratic leadership has gone to the White House and said we 
need a new approach and a new spirit.
  I just wanted to say up front, I have served as the co-chairman with 
Congressman Michel of the House Republican Task Force on Health since 
July 1991. We have met every Thursday. We have 25 Members in the room.
  If you came into this group, who have now spent 3 years on this, and 
you said let us have a new approach and a new spirit, and let us write 
a technically correct bill and get it to the floor in 3 weeks, we 
cannot do it. We don't want to try to match the Democratic leadership 
in bringing to the floor a badly thought out bill, without adequate 
scoring, without technical examination. And yet they are downtown last 
night saying they are going to a brand new bill with ``a new approach 
and a new spirit.''
  Let me go on and quote from the Washington Post:

       Foley, speaking outside the White House, said the 
     legislation the House will write under its new approach would 
     likely have mandates.

  Notice, 3 weeks out they do not even know whether or not they will 
have a major provision which changes the whole nature of the bill.
  They go on to quote, ``Mitchell was more oblique about the Senate 
version's provisions.''
  In other words, the House may be asked to vote on mandates, while the 
Senate is specifically not asked to vote on mandates.
  Now, finally, there is a comment in here about the majority leader 
meeting with some of the Democratic Members and promising them that 
they would have a chance to come back and talk to them again. In other 
words, meetings will go on in secret, a draft will be written, some 
selected Members will be invited in, they will have a chance to 
consult, and then other Members will come in, they will have a chance 
to consult, and then finally a draft which could get 218 votes will be 
written, and the result is that they will then rush to the floor and 
try to get the 218 votes before anybody has had a chance to see it.
  Let me outline what I think would be a more honest, a more honorable, 
and a more positive approach, and more worthy of the American people, 
when you are dealing with an issue the size of the health of every 
American, life and death for every American, medical insurance, 
insurance coverage, pharmaceuticals, a huge, complex, enormously 
difficult issue.
  I want to propose that the Democratic leadership, on behalf of the 
Clinton administration, draft their bill over the next 2 weeks; that 
the bipartisan group that is working draft a bill over the next 2 
weeks; that those two bills go to the Committee on Rules the last week 
before the August recess; that we print both bills; we bring a rule to 
the floor; and we propose both bills at that point; and we pass a rule 
the last few days we are in session, probably around August 11 or 12.
  We then go home. We make enough copies available. We might ask the 
New York Times, which earlier published the Clinton plan as a 
paperback, to publish both bills as a side-by-side comparison, and make 
it available in paperback to the whole country. And we spend the August 
recess listening to the American people.
  We go back home, and we allow every group to analyze the bills, to 
learn what is inside them. We allow the news media to have enough time 
to examine them.
  Then we come back here in the first week of September after Labor 
Day, and we vote, and we choose between a market-oriented, private 
sector, group insurance approach, that eliminates preconditions for the 
insured, that creates tax fairness for the self-employed and the 
unemployed, that has malpractice reform, the basic provisions which a 
variety of groups, Cooper-Grandy, Rowland-Bilirakis, Michel-Lott, a 
whole series of bills that move in that direction, and they are 
gradually coming together into a common broad bipartisan coalition.
  On the other side, we would have whatever version of the Clinton bill 
that the Democratic leadership thinks has the best chance to pass.
  But the country would have had 3 weeks to look at the bills, to talk 
with the Members, to make up their mind.
  On talk radio, people would have had 3 weeks to discuss the actual 
printed documents. And among experts across the country, they would 
have had 3 weeks to study the bills, to write their op-ed pieces, to be 
on talk shows, to come and see Congressmen, so when we came back to 
vote, we would, first, know what was in the bills, we would, second, 
know what they did to people, and we would, third, know how the 
American people feel about them.
  Let me say, as I said earlier, I am so confident that this is the 
right approach, that I would be willing to invite the President or the 
Speaker or the majority leader to come to my district to stand side-by-
side. They can present the Clinton bill, I will present the bipartisan 
approach, and let people ask questions.
  I would be willing to go to any Democratic Member's district to stand 
side-by-side, to have a dialog with the liberal Democrats. I think on a 
bipartisan basis, Republicans and Democrats who favor the more market-
oriented approach would be willing to stand up and have comparisons 
done, and to live by the comparisons.

                              {time}  1520

  I think that approach would be so much healthier, so much better for 
the country, so much more correct that that is the direction we ought 
to go in.
  I think it will be a great tragedy if this administration takes a 
bill--and here are some examples. These are thick bills. This one is a 
health bill, which is 382 pages long. Here is another health bill which 
is 292 pages. And these are the small ones. The Ways and Means bill is 
1,500 pages. It is thicker than these four bills combined. The 
Education and Labor bill is 1,200 pages.
  It is impossible, physically impossible for the legislative staffs to 
write technically correct legislation, to have them looked at by 
experts, to have them scored by the Congressional Budget Office and to 
bring them to the floor between now and August 12. And it is a 
disservice to the American people to try to ram through, by political 
logrolling, and pork barrel a bill which has not been studied, has not 
been examined and has not been criticized.
  I will close by repeating my proposal: Let us have a Clinton bill. 
Let us have a bipartisan bill. Let us print them. Let us bring a rule 
to the floor. Let us commit to a vote the first week we come back. 
Nothing will be lost. Nothing is going to happen during August. There 
is no artificial reason. There is no reason to artificially rush to 
pass anything before the break.
  If we pass it the first week, whatever we pass the first week, when 
we come back, can go to conference immediately. We will not have lost a 
day. But the American people will have gained knowledge. The American 
people will have gained power. The American people will have gained a 
chance to talk to their representative. And America and the Congress 
will be healthier for having approached the issue of health in an 
honest and an honorable and a respectable manner.

                          ____________________