[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 106 (Thursday, August 4, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 4, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
         MORE THAN 10 DAYS NEEDED TO ANALYZE HEALTH CARE BILLS

  (Mr. HOKE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, today is August 4. Last September President 
Clinton introduced a bill of 1,352 pages. It took the American public, 
with all of the various groups that are interested in such legislation 
on health care, as well as the media, nearly a year to completely 
analyze and determine what was in that bill, where people stood with 
it.
  Three weeks ago, approximately, the President and the Democratic 
leadership in the Congress declared that bill dead, and they have 
introduced two new bills. One is Clinton-Gephardt, and the other one is 
Clinton-Mitchell. The fact is neither one of those bills exist. They do 
not exist except conceptually in short memorandum. The Mitchell bill 
has 17 new taxes; we do not know exactly how the Gephardt bill will be 
funded. But the fact is we have not seen the legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not think we ought to delay the recess as the 
headline says in Roll Call today. I think what we need is we need to 
see the legislation so that the American people, the people that I 
represent in western Cuyahoga County in Ohio, have an opportunity to 
see that legislation themselves, and analyze it, and then tell me over 
the recess what it is that they believe about it so that we can come 
back here, and, by the 15th of September, vote on a piece of 
legislation that will finally have the analysis and will have the 
feedback from the American people rather than ramming something down 
the throat of the American people in the next 10 days of this Congress.

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