[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 112 (Wednesday, July 12, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H6836]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


    WHEN I'M 65 I'D LIKE TO BE FREE TO CHOOSE MY HEALTH CARE DESTINY

  (Mr. ARMEY asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. ARMEY. Well, Mr. Speaker, there they go again, my colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle feigning moral outrage about something they 
think they might have imagined they read accurately reported in the 
paper. The outrage of the week apparently is the fact that I had the 
temerity to admit publicly that, if I lived in a free world, I would 
have a world in which I would be free to choose personally and 
individually that I, as an individual American citizen, would have the 
freedom to decide for myself whether or not I would enroll myself in a 
Government-provided benefits program.
  Now I do not have the freedom today to decline from paying my FICA 
taxes to fund that program for those that are enrolled in it today, and 
I accept that I pay my taxes. I just made the observation yesterday 
that, when I am 65, I would like to be free to choose not to become, in 
any extent, a ward of the state. I would like to choose, if I dare make 
the choice for myself, to not have the Government decide any part of my 
health care destiny. I do not think it is unreasonable in America that 
we might dare to believe that we could write legislation that said to 
individual American citizens at an age of maturity, when they are 
probably, probably capable of tending to their own affairs, having done 
so throughout most of their life, that, ``You, Mr. and Mrs. America, 
are free to choose.''
  Now, if that is an outrage to my colleagues on the left, so be it. It 
only reflects their inability to understand who we are.


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