[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 180 (Tuesday, November 14, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H12199]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        AMERICA DESERVES BETTER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Doggett] is recognized during 
morning business for 3 minutes.
  Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, you know, to understand the crisis we are 
going through here in Washington today, you really only need to 
understand three words, Newt Gingrich and Medicare.
  You see, from the beginning it has been Newt's way or no way with 
reference to the way this Government would operate. Newt Gingrich made 
it very clear in the spring of this year, and he repeated it this 
summer, he repeated it again this summer, that he wanted this crisis. 
It was not something he was trying to avoid doing. He wanted to 
demonstrate to America and to the world that he was king of the 
mountain and that everybody had to salute him because he was the fount 
of all knowledge about the problems of the world.
  The key part of Newt's way or no way as far as this particular budget 
crisis is, of course, the one item that they chose to put on the 
continuing resolution that they sent over for the courageous veto 
President Clinton exercised, and that is Medicare. He wanted to send 
the seniors, he wanted to send the people with disabilities around this 
country a happy New Year's present in the form of a Medicare premium 
increase. It is the one irrelevant provision they chose to tack on a 
continuing resolution which, of course, would never have been necessary 
to send to the President at all if they had simply had the willingness 
to do their job and pass the appropriations bills rather then messing 
around with all of this agenda of the radical right which has tied them 
up. It has not been President Clinton that caused them to get only 2 of 
13 appropriations bills to his desk by September 30. It has not been 
the Democratic minority in the House or the Senate. They could not 
agree amongst themselves as to how crazy they would be with reference 
to passing what the chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations 
called payback time to the radical right and holding up the business 
that should have been occurring in getting these appropriations bills 
there.
  No, cutting Medicare, raising the cost to the ordinary person relying 
on Medicare and Newt Gingrich explained the situation that we face 
today.
  I have been very interested this morning to listen to my Republican 
colleagues as they responded to this crisis because they have told the 
people of America two things:
  The first one is, ``You know, we Republicans are not really as mean 
as you Democrats say we have been. We are just a little bit mean. I 
mean, we do not want to totally foul all the water supply of America. 
We just want to let it be a little bit more dirty than it is today.''
  On the environment, ``We just think the environment ought to be a 
little more dirty than it is today.''
  ``And we do not believe you should cut off the opportunity of 
students to go to school, they can pay just at little bit more, just 
another thousand dollars. It is not as bad as what Newt Gingrich and 
his group proposed in the fall to hike the price by $5,000 to get a 
college education. We think raising it $1,000 on middle-class families 
who are struggling to get a young person through high school so they 
can go to college, we think just a little bit more pain is okay.''
  And to our seniors, ``Just a little bit more pain is okay.''
  Well, I think that America deserves better treatment than that. It is 
getting through Newt Gingrich, and we certainly do not need the kind of 
Medicare cuts he proposed.

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