[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 101 (Thursday, July 28, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


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

 
                  CONSIDERATION OF HEALTH CARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Engle). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to follow up with Members of the 
House on the comments made by the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. 
Hoekstra] just a minute ago, and I have just come from an agriculture 
hearing, a Committee on Agriculture hearing, and we today did a mock 
markup on GATT, which basically means that we voted on a lot of the 
substance of the GATT agreement, the General Agreement on Trade and 
Tariff, and this section was about that thick, 3 or 4 inches thick, and 
it only dealt with agriculture issues. To my knowledge that was the 
first time the members of the committee had seen, not just that portion 
of the bill in its entirely, but the related amendments, and yet I 
suppose we were supposed to be miracle readers, and could sit over 
there in 2 or 3 hours and debate while also reading the bill for the 
first time.
  Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues know, maybe trade agreements should go 
that way, but here we go on health care, and we have had the health 
care debate going, not just in the 103d Congress, but in previous 
Congresses. We have the Rowland-Billirakis bill, we have a McDermott 
bill, we have the Michel bill, we have the Clinton bill. We have some 
bills right now, as the gentleman said earlier, we should put a 
deadline on to debate and to vote on. Now I under stand that there is a 
Democrat leadership bill that is coming up. It is all done in secret. 
Nobody is in there.
  As my colleagues know, I know there is some good and bad in sunshine 
laws, but I think this is an example where we need a sunshine law, 
where we have such a tremendous issue that is being dealth with behind 
the doors, behind the scenes, and by one party which, I think, is 
offensive and outrageous, and the American people need to know that the 
major bill, the thing that we are not able to add and put on the table 
right now for review and study, is being crafted secretly in some back 
room.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. KINGSTON. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, perhaps we can reflect back on the NAFTA 
debate that we had in 1993. We had a NAFTA document, 2,000 pages, a 
good process, a very difficult process. We had the opportunity to read 
it. We had the opportunity to debate it. We had the opportunity to go 
back to our districts to talk to businesses, to talk to labor unions, 
to talk to a whole series of groups, to fully understand; maybe not 
fully understand, but get a deeper understanding of what NAFTA would do 
to jobs in our districts, to jobs in this country, to earning power in 
this country, and we went through a very lengthy process, and I think, 
when we got done, I think everybody felt that they had had the 
opportunity to input, to be heard, and then we made a decision.
  Compare that to the process we are looking at now. We are both 
freshmen. I guess we like that kind of process, understanding what we 
are going to be voting on. It really scares me, what we could be 
looking at during the first 2 weeks of August.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I like the gentleman's idea of going home, 
and talking to the voters, to the constituents, to health care 
providers, the nurses, the physicians, and the insurance companies, the 
laborers, the homemakers. We need to talk to them about it. They need 
to know, because, if the gentleman remembers when the President 
introduced this health care bill, I think it had over 50 percent 
approval, maybe 57. But once people read that 1,329-page document, the 
approval rating went straight to the ground because it is all in the 
fine print, and we have got to have that fine print, not just so that 
435 Members of Congress can read it, but so the American people can 
read it.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. We need the ability to go through and read the fine 
print so that we can find out what was used to get the last 10 or 15 
votes that are going to vote in favor in that bill if it passes with 
218 votes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Let me ask the gentleman about that because I know 
there was a lot of discussion that NAFTA actually passed, not on the 
merits, but on the allocation of given roads and bridges and keeping 
certain special interest projects in people's district. I ask, ``Do you 
think that will be the case in health care?''
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. We have already seen it. We have already seen it in the 
bill that came out of the Committee on Ways and Means where there is 
criteria. There are dollars available for teaching hospitals, for 
construction, low-interest construction loans, and the criteria, as the 
gentleman knows, it is kind of like, well, makes it look like it is 
available for everybody, but it so happens, when we take a look at the 
criteria and how specific the criteria are, it would only benefit three 
teaching hospitals around the country, one in Chicago, one in New York, 
who so happened to be represented by key members of the Committee on 
Ways and Means.
  So, there is beginning to evolve this practice now in health care 
that is not what is good health care policy, but what is it going to 
take to get those last votes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. So, as it stands right now, we are still having the 
same debate on health care, but it is going on secretly to cut these 
bills, but the question of who pays for it, who runs it, which are the 
two predominant questions, are still unanswered and unaddressed.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Right.

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