[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 133 (Wednesday, September 21, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 21, 1994]



                              {time}  1010
                  MINORITY WHIP BLACKMAILING PRESIDENT

  (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DeFRAZIO. Mr. Speaker, today, page A21, Washington Post, 
``Clinton Warned on Trade Measure.'' ``House Minority Whip Gingrich 
said he told Clinton, you have a chance to get GATT, you have no chance 
to get health care, you need to choose what you want to get done.''
  So now we have lowered ourselves, or the minority, to blackmailing 
the President of the United States and saying if you go forward with 
health care, we will kill GATT.
  Now, either you think GATT is good, or you do not. I do not. I think 
it is a big loser for the American economy, for working people in 
America, and for American sovereignty, and I am against it. And I think 
we need to improve the system of health care in this country. But it is 
pretty hard for me to see how the minority whip can say, ``I am going 
to kill GATT if you try and do something on health care.''
  Now, either he believes in GATT, or he does not. One or the other. Or 
is he using it to blackmail the President of the United States for his 
own gain?
  Mr. Speaker, the Washington Post article is included for the Record.

               [From the Washington Post, Sept. 21, 1994]

                    Clinton Warned on Trade Measure

                            (By Dana Priest)

       Republican House and Senate leaders told President Clinton 
     yesterday that trying to pass a last-minute health care bill 
     would create what one called ``a partisan reaction'' in 
     Congress and kill Republican support for the General 
     Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) legislation.
       ``I suggested strongly they could not pass a health bill in 
     the House, but [they] have the opportunity to pass GATT. If 
     they pursued health care much longer, they would kill both,'' 
     House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said he told 
     Clinton at a White House meeting with congressional leaders.
       The Gingrich remarks came as 45 groups and other prominent 
     supporters of comprehensive health care reform asked Senate 
     Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Maine) to abandon 
     efforts to pass a modest reform bill this year because it 
     ``represents a step backwards for our members.''
       Mitchell said he would begin polling members to ``evaluate 
     the impact'' of the Republican statements and the letter on 
     any bill's prospects. ``They make an already difficult task 
     even more difficult,'' Mitchell said.
       But even the authors of the modest bill being written by a 
     ``mainstream'' bipartisan Senate group says it has virtually 
     no chance of passing the Senate and House before this 
     session's scheduled mid-October adjournment.
       Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House 
     Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote to Clinton urging him to 
     ``give health care a decent burial. . . . It is time for us 
     to accept the fact that the health insurance industry, an 
     assortment of small and large freeloaders, ideologues and 
     their allies in the Congress have succeeded in their goal: 
     preserving a status quo in which they prosper while millions 
     of Americans suffer.''
       The 45 groups that signed the letter to Mitchell said ``it 
     would be a grave mistake to bow to last minute pressure to 
     pass any `mainstream' health care legislation that is both 
     unworkable and destined to cause real harm to millions of 
     Americans.''
       The letter was signed by several unions, consumer groups, 
     medical associations, senior citizen and church organizations 
     including Citizen Action, Consumer Unions, the American 
     Association of Retired Persons and the Unitarian Universalist 
     Association.
       At the White House meeting with leaders of both parties, 
     Gingrich said, he told Clinton, ``You have a chance to get 
     GATT, you have no chance to get health care, you need to 
     choose what you want to get done.'' Trying to pass health 
     care ``would create a partisan reaction'' in the House that 
     would spill over to GATT, he said.
       Asked whether his party would consider supporting even a 
     modest health bill, Gingrich responded: ``They are not going 
     to get [Republican] cooperation. We don't want to participate 
     in writing a 1,100-page bill at the last minute.''
       House Majority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.), who has 
     supported the administration's push for comprehensive health 
     care reform and also attended the White House meeting, said 
     Gingrich and Senate Minority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) 
     told Clinton, ``That's the choice you have, health care or 
     this GATT agreement. . . . I was taken aback by the fact they 
     were so blatant about it.''
       Bonior said Vice President Gore then ``expressed the need 
     to do GATT, why it was so important.'' Gore, he added, 
     ``spoke in defense of GATT, as opposed to health care.''
       Mitchell, who took himself out of contention for the 
     Supreme Court to help Clinton pass an insurance-for-all 
     health care bill, has been trying to reach agreement with the 
     mainstream group on a package of insurance market reforms and 
     insurance subsidies for low-income people.

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