[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 160 (Tuesday, October 17, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H10081]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        DO NOT USE SCARE TACTICS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. Whitfield] is recognized 
during morning business for 3 minutes.
  Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Speaker, I have in my hands today an article taken 
from yesterday's Wall Street Journal entitled ``Clinton Recruits 
Campaign Team of Nasty Boys.'' I would like to just read the first 
paragraph:

       Gearing up for 1996, President Clinton is fielding a motley 
     crew of reelection strategists with reputations for 
     shrewdness and ruthless tactics. A mainstay on his team, New 
     Yorker Henry Sheilkoph, readily boasts, ``I subscribe to 
     terror.'' Last year, in speaking to a convention of political 
     consultants, Mr. Sheilkoph told a gathering that terror works 
     in political campaigns because it is so easy to make people 
     hate.

  What a sad commentary that is on the political system in America that 
political strategists would deliberately be trying to terrorize and 
scare people in America, and the efforts to terrorize have already 
started in the area of Medicare.
  As you know Medicare will be bankrupt by the year 2002, according to 
the President's own board of trustees, and we are committed to 
preserving that plan, to make it a better plan than it is today. Under 
the Republican plan, we are going to be spending $355 billion more over 
the next 6 years, 7 years, on Medicare than were spent in the past 7 
years.
  But more important than that, if you work in a major corporation 
today or if you work in the Federal Government today, or if you are in 
the U.S. Congress today, you have options to choose your health care 
from five or six different plans. But if you are a senior citizen in 
America today, you have one option, a fee-for-service option.
  Some suburban areas and urban areas, you have an HMO that you can 
participate in. But we are going to provide senior citizens with 
additional options. If they want to keep the system they have today, 
they can do so. If they want to go to an HMO, they can do so. If they 
want to go to provider service networks, they can do so. If they want 
to be into a medical savings account, paid for by the Government, they 
can do so.
  So I would urge the President, I would urge those Members of the 
Democratic Party who are trying to use this issue to scare the American 
people, to come forward and be honest and say, ``Yes, this is going to 
be a better system.''
  We do not need nasty boys, so to speak, running political campaigns 
in America.

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