[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 90 (Tuesday, June 18, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H6488-H6493]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              HEALTH CARE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Salmon] is recognized for 60 
minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SALMON. Mr. Speaker, tonight I would like to talk about a very 
crucial issue that I think probably most of us campaigned on the last 
election cycle, the issue of health care and the health care dilemma in 
our country.
  Most estimate that there are probably about 40 million to 50 million 
Americans out there that have a lack of health insurance to take care 
of the needs of their family. As the father of 4 children, my heart 
goes out to those people, because frankly when your child is sick, 
there is nothing in the world that you would not do, nothing that you 
would not give up on the planet to pursue an effective remedy for that 
child's health malady. Or if a parent were sick or a wife or a husband, 
you would give up everything that you had to pursue the most state-of-
the-art medical technologies available to try to rescue that 
individual.
  I have some friends back home in Arizona that have a child with 
cystic fibrosis. Let me just tell a little about their story. They are 
both self-employed, have had health insurance for years and then they 
had a child with a serious health malady, cystic fibrosis. I think as 
most know, cystic fibrosis is a disorder that can be very, very 
debilitating, requires a lot of medical care, a lot of money to be 
expended, a lot of time, love, and patience, and most people with 
cystic fibrosis do not live past their teenage years. If you have a 
child with cystic fibrosis that lives on into their twenties, you count 
yourself lucky to have had that time available to spend with them.
  My own child, Jacob, when he was a young boy, had several health 
problems and there was a fear that he might have cystic fibrosis. They 
did a little medical test on him and they determined that he did not 
have it, but I remember in the 3 days that we were waiting for that 
diagnosis to come about after they had done the testing, I remember the 
agony that we went through, the fear that we went through as parents 
wondering whether or not our child had this debilitating illness. But, 
then, this is not about my problem, it is back to my friends in Arizona 
and their child. Because after their child was diagnosed with cystic 
fibrosis, their insurance rates skyrocketed. In fact, they went up 
about 5 or 6 times. The premiums went up exorbitantly. They could not 
afford it anymore. And so they had to drop their insurance.
  The answer in today's society under our current administrative 
policies and State governments and Federal Government, at least in the 
State of Arizona, is they have to spend down all of their assets to 
qualify for Medicaid so that that child could get the kind of care that 
she needed to preserve her frail young life.

                              {time}  1945

  That is not right. We ought to be addressing the issue of preexisting 
conditions. We ought to be addressing the issue of portability. These 
things are not just campaign slogans, they are not rhetoric. They are 
real-life situations with people, with situations that would tug at 
your heart strings. Most of us that have children and recognize again 
that you would do anything for a child that was in harm's way, such as 
this child is, you would do anything,

[[Page H6489]]

you would give up everything. There is no price too great to pay.
  But why should they have to? Should we not hear, as representatives 
of our Nation's Government, the people that sent us back here to carve 
solutions? Should we not address the problem? Well, about 57 days ago, 
the House passed a measure, a health care reform bill that would do 
just that. It addressed the issue of preexisting conditions. For those 
people that are not self-employed, like my friends, but they work for a 
larger employer, they are not necessarily canceled from their insurance 
but they are job locked. They cannot ever change or go into a different 
job because they know that if they have to get another job that the 
likelihood that the insurance company from the new employer will pick 
them up is slim to none.
  So for years and years and years, people have been locked into these 
jobs because they have no alternative if they want that kind of care 
for their little one, or for their mom and dad, or for their spouse, or 
whatever the case may be. But we passed a measure that would deal with 
that 57 days ago, but it is still stuck because the President has an 
aversion to one of the components in the bill that he says he cannot 
support.
  So, thus, it has been held hostage for 56, 57 days, and the clock 
keeps ticking while these Americans keep waiting for health care 
reform. They keep waiting for us to cross partisan boundaries and be 
Americans first and do what is right by the American people, and it 
languishes because the President cannot support a particular component 
which I will get to later.
  Mr. Speaker, up to 25 million Americans would benefit from 
preexisting conditions reform, which eliminates the preexisting 
conditions exclusions for people with prior health coverage. That helps 
America's roughly 4 million job-locked workers by freeing them to job 
hunt since companies will be required by law to accept persons who had 
prior health insurance coverage, a very, very substantial 
reform. Instead of making these changes happen, this President holds 
the reform package hostage.

  This bill, this medical reform bill, also establishes a fraud and 
abuse hotline and, obviously, I think most of us know why we need that. 
There are those in the health care industry that would profit off of 
human misery and suffering. I think that probably the numbers of those 
people are probably relatively small, but just like any aspect of our 
society, lawyers, doctors, politicians, teachers, you name it, you will 
find fraud and abuse in virtually every aspect of our society. That is 
not to say all people are rotten. That is to say that fraud and abuse 
are two bad by-products of our society and things that we need to keep 
a lid on.
  Most of us see the problems when we go to the hospital. We see the 
$10 aspirin and we see the wooden throat stick that they use that we 
are charged $15 for, and we know that there is a major problem where we 
have been in for surgery and we know that possibly we have been charged 
for things that never happened to us or services that were never 
rendered. So there needs to be a fraud hotline and the laws need to be 
tightened up, and this bill does that, but it languishes. We cannot get 
by the filibuster rule in the Senate because the President holds it 
hostage because there are things in it that he says that he cannot 
stomach.
  Mr. Speaker, it increases access and it increases affordability. Our 
plan fights the discrimination that has been applied to small business 
for years. Why is it that a large company that employs thousands or 
maybe even tens of thousands of people, why is it that they can get 
full tax deductibility as a legitimate business expense for health care 
coverage that they provide to their employees, but yet a small employer 
that employs 50 or fewer or 100 or fewer, why is it that they do not 
enjoy the same kind of tax favorability that the large, big 
corporations do? Is it not known that in this country 80 percent to 
maybe 85 percent of all of the people that are employed in this country 
work in small business? Then we scratch our heads and we wonder aloud, 
I wonder why it is that these small businesses are not providing health 
care?
  Well, when you have a discriminatory tax policy which favors the big 
corporations that yield the tremendous profits but yet you won't give 
the same kind of a tax break to small businesses, you understand part 
and parcel the dilemma and the problem that we are now faced with in 
the health care arena. Yet our bill addresses that problem. Right now 
they only enjoy a 30 percent deduction, and that, again, only happened 
after the Republicans took Congress a year and a half ago.

  We are proposing to take it up to 80 percent. We would like to take 
it to 100, but the President has a problem with that, too. He does not 
want the people in small business to enjoy the same kind of tax 
favorability on their health care deductions as the large business 
people get, and yet it languishes because the President holds it 
hostage.
  Seniors and the terminally ill, two Contract With America provisions, 
are provided in our plan. The first allows tax deductions for long-term 
health care needs, such as nursing homes and home care; home care, 
something that has not been provided ever by this body. The second 
allows terminally ill patients and their families to receive tax-free 
accelerated death benefits from their insurance companies. These 
provisions will provide greater financial security to families 
struggling with terminal and catastrophic illnesses, but yet that is 
also included in our health care reform plan. It is still languishing, 
day 57. It is held hostage by the President.
  On cutting red tape, now, how many people out there think that we do 
not need to cut red tape when it comes to the health care bureaucracy? 
I think most people that have ever dealt with any kind of health care 
provider understand that probably 40 percent of a doctor or hospital's 
time is spent pushing paper, satisfying regulations of a State and 
Federal bureaucracy, as well as a big insurance company bureaucracy, 
and yet our plan has a measure that would cut through this red tape. In 
fact, it is one of the biggest measures, and this is the one that we 
want to talk about tonight, the thing that the President is so 
adamantly opposed to, and that is the concept of medical savings 
accounts.
  He would tell you that this is just another way that we are rewarding 
our rich friends. Well, let me talk to you about this commonsense 
solution, and you decide for yourselves if this is something that would 
help people or it would hurt people. The concept is easy. It is like an 
IRA fund where people can set aside or your employer can set aside for 
you pre-tax dollars with no taxation whatsoever, and it would be in 
your own account for you to spend on your medical needs. Now, coupled 
with that, the employer, or if the individual purchases the medical 
savings account or establishes a medical savings account for 
themselves, would then also purchase a higher deductible policy. Let us 
say they have in their medical savings account $2,000, so then they 
would purchase a policy with a deductible of $2,000.

  Now, the actuaries will tell you and common sense will also tell you 
that the higher the deductible, the lower the premium coverage. So for 
pennies on the dollar, you can get a policy that covers your needs but 
has a higher deductible. Then you pay cash out of your medical savings 
account when you go to see whatever provider you want to see, whether 
that is a DO, or a chiropractor, or a naturopath or your own allopathic 
physician, your gynecologist, your OB/GYN, your orthopedic doctor, 
whatever health care provider you choose for yourself to meet your 
needs, and not have some bureaucrat dictate to you what your needs are 
and how your needs should be resolved or addressed, you decide. It puts 
ultimate freedom in the hands of the patient, and it puts it back to 
the free market solution that has worked so well for other aspects of 
our economy.
  Let me tell you some of the reasons that medical savings account will 
work. When you are spending your own money, you are a little bit more 
cost conscious and probably a little bit better at detecting fraud and 
abuse than some of these big bureaucracies are. When you spend your own 
cash, you are going to be very frugal and you are going to be very cost 
conscious and you are going to shop around and get the best deal you 
can.
  Mr. Speaker, let me illustrate from my life. When our last child was 
born,

[[Page H6490]]

Matthew, the cost paid for his delivery by my insurance company to the 
hospital and the doctor was $3,500. Two months later, my sister-in-law 
had a baby, but she did not have insurance, so she paid cash, $1,500; 
$2,000 difference by paying cash. The same thing will happen for all 
individuals out there, we who are able to shop around and get the best 
deal they possibly can.
  Also, when you do not have to worry about going through this big 
monstrous bureaucracy, be it an insurance bureaucracy or be it a 
Federal, local or State bureaucracy, you do not have all the paperwork 
to go through. So obviously you are going to get a better price, and 
the cost will come down. It puts ultimate freedom in the patient's 
hand. It cuts costs.
  At the end of the year, the other wonderful thing is that what you do 
you spend is yours. It does not revert to some insurance company's 
profits bottom line, and it does not go back to some wasteful 
bureaucracy in Washington, DC. It is your money to do with as you need 
to do. If you spent it on something other than health coverage, it will 
be taxed at the normal rate. But if you decide to roll it over the next 
year to grow the value of your medical savings account, then there is 
no taxation whatsoever. And a relatively healthy person of my age that 
started a medical savings account, kept rolling it over and did not 
have any serious health concerns to pay out of the medical savings 
account would be able to have a real healthy nest egg by the time they 
retire to deal with their own long-term care.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a wonderful plan. I cannot understand why the 
President would hold it hostage. He says that it is a benefit to the 
rich people. Well, common sense would tell you again that, if you gave 
a medical savings account to some individual, they would be able to 
make just as smart decisions as a rich person could if they did not 
have money.
  Common sense would also tell you that, when a person gets first-
dollar coverage right out of their medical savings account provided to 
them by their employer in lieu of the traditional kind of health care 
coverage or forcing people into managed care, and giving them the 
ultimate freedom, that these individuals can make good decisions for 
themselves.
  The real answer for why I think some of the liberal people hate 
medical savings accounts is that they fundamentally believe that 
people, that the American people are too stupid to take care of their 
own health care needs, and they have more faith in bureaucrats and 
bureaucratic systems than they do a father or a mother taking care of 
the health care needs of their child, or a spouse taking care of the 
health care needs of his or her spouse.
  Well, we Republicans in Congress have a different idea. We agree with 
our Founding Fathers that the free market system indeed works. It works 
in the sale of cars. It works in the sale of food. It works in the sale 
of commodities. It also works in health care. It keeps everybody 
honest. It gets back to the idea that people are in charge, not 
bureaucrats. People are in charge of their health care destiny, and 
they can best determine what their needs are.
  Let me read just real quickly a couple of letters that were written 
that show the real hypocrisy in this debate. One is dated September 8, 
1992, and it says: dear colleague, and it was sent to all the 
colleagues in the Senate at the time:

       The United States is faced with a crisis in health care on 
     two fronts: access and cost control. So far most of the 
     proposals before Congress attempt to deal with access but do 
     not adequately address the more important factor, cost 
     control. We have introduced legislation that will begin to 
     get medical spending under control by giving individual 
     consumers a larger stake in spending decisions.

  I do not need to keep reading the letter. I think you get the gist of 
it. But later on it says, in order to protect employees and their 
families from catastrophic health care expenses above the amount in 
medical care savings accounts, an employer could be required to 
purchase a high deductible catastrophic insurance policy, exactly the 
plan we are offering. In fact this is probably one of the most ringing 
endorsements for the concept of medical savings accounts coupled with 
the catastrophic care policy as I have ever seen or heard of.
  Do you know who signed this ringing endorsement of medical savings 
account? Senators Tom Daschle, of all people, and John Breaux, two of 
the voices now that are echoing the President's concerns that this is 
only again tax breaks for the rich or medical care for the rich. Back 
then in 1992, when they were in control and when they were trying to 
approach it from a bipartisan instead of an extremely partisan 
approach, they said that medical savings accounts was an idea whose 
time had come and one of the best ways to control costs and provide 
ultimate freedom to people to make the health care decisions for their 
lives. But, oh, what a difference a day makes. Just a few years later 
right in the heat of a campaign for the Presidency, now they are taking 
the President's side and they are opposing medical savings accounts.
  Mr. Speaker, could it be that they do not want the Republican 
Congress to get credit for such a wonderful idea and so they want to 
stall it for that reason? Or could it be that some of the managed care 
institutions who have lobbied them so hard because they fear that they 
will substantially lose market share when we do not force people into 
managed care have lobbied them so hard and heavy that they are afraid 
of losing those friends who have helped them get into office?

                              {time}  2000

  One last letter I would like to read to you and then I am going to 
yield the balance of my time to the distinguished majority whip in the 
House of Representatives. Just so you know that this is not a 
Republican approach, this is an idea whose time has come.
  By the way, there are about 25,000 companies out there who are 
offering medical savings accounts to their employees with phenomenal 
success. In fact, almost every one of them, to the company, have 
realized a decrease in their health care costs, happier and healthier 
employees controlling their own health care destiny and not having it 
mandated to them from either assurance bureaucracy or a Federal or 
State bureaucracy.
  Who else has realized this? There are some, I think, very, very 
reasonable folks on the other side who have recognized this is the way 
it goes. This is a letter to President Clinton.

       Dear President Clinton: As original cosponsors of medical 
     savings account legislation in the House of Representatives, 
     we urge your review of and your public support for this 
     wonderfully innovative idea.
       The recent vote on the House Republican plan should not be 
     used to judge the Democratic Party's position on medical 
     savings accounts. As you know, medical savings accounts have 
     been a major plank in Congressman Torricelli's health care 
     platform in his Senate race.
       We cannot think of a more Democratic idea than MSA's. In 
     fact, it was originally our idea. We want Democrats to get 
     credit for it. In the Senate, Democrats John Breaux, Tom 
     Daschle, Sam Nunn, and David Boren initiated the idea, an 
     idea they are now saying is such a rotten terrible idea.
       Dick Gephardt included MSA's in the House Democratic 
     Leadership bill in 1994, just 2 short years ago. It was a 
     great idea to Dick Gephardt.
       There were 28 House Democrats who cosponsored our initial 
     MSA legislation. There are currently three Democratic U.S. 
     Senate candidates who have supported MSA legislation.
       You also should know that the current contract of the 
     United Mine Workers provides its members with MSA's. We do 
     not believe the UMW qualifies as healthier and wealthier than 
     the general population--a charge leveled by uninformed MSA 
     opponents.

  I could go on. Again, they are extolling the virtues of medical 
savings accounts. It is an idea whose time has come. Let us stop 
holding health care, innovative, life saving health care reform, 
hostage, because we owe some special interest a favor or because we do 
not want Republicans to get credit for a wonderful idea whose time has 
come. Let us do the right thing by the American people.
  President Clinton, I urge you, with every fiber of my being, to sign 
this into law, to stop holding this legislation hostage. If you really 
feel our pain, as I know you say you do, then realize that there are 
millions of people out there who would benefit dramatically. My friends 
back in Arizona who have the child with cystic fibrosis, they are 
counting on you, President Clinton, to not only talk the talk, but to 
begin to walk the walk.

[[Page H6491]]



                       REPUBLICAN ACCOMPLISHMENTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Delay] is recognized for 38 
minutes as a designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. 
Salmon] for his wonderful words, trying to straighten out exactly what 
is going on in this Congress, and particularly as it pertains to all 
the political rhetoric that gets thrown around out here.
  People's memories seem to be rather short when it comes to 
remembering, one, that six Senators, six Democrat Senators on the 
Senate side campaigned on the notion that they wanted a balanced budget 
amendment to the Constitution, and yet they are the very ones who 
stopped us from being able to pass that amendment to the Constitution 
and send it to the States.
  The gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Salmon] was very eloquent in pointing 
out the fact that leaders of both the House and the Senate supported 
medical savings accounts when they controlled the House, but when it 
came time to actually vote for them and work for them and actually put 
them into place, they were nowhere to be found and in fact worked very 
hard against it.
  The same thing happened last week. Last week the House Democrat 
leadership issued a report regarding the efforts of the Republican 
Congress to bring change to the Federal Government. Now, not 
surprising, the Democrats had very few kind words to say about the 
Republican Congress. Coming from the guardians of gridlock, the masters 
of disaster, the stalwarts of the status quo, their words of 
disapproval should be seen by the American people as affirmation of all 
of our efforts over the last 16 months.
  To the Democrat leadership, any change that makes the Government work 
better, that brings power back to the people, that cuts wasteful 
Washington spending, is mean and extreme. But my colleagues, who is the 
extremist? The one who fights to change Washington, or the one who 
battles that change? Let us go through 10 legislative issues, just 10 
issues, that the Congress considered this last year to find out who 
really is extreme.
  First, a balanced budget. Now, do you support a balanced budget 
amendment to the Constitution? Should the Congress actually balance the 
Nation's books like families are forced to balance their own books?
  Eighty-three percent of the American people support a balanced budget 
amendment to the Constitution. The Democrat Congress, the 103d 
Congress, failed to pass a balanced budget and rejected a balanced 
budget amendment to the Constitution. But in the Republican Congress, 
the House passed a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. It 
also passed a budget which balanced in 7 years, without raising taxes, 
the first balanced budget in a generation.
  Second, taxes. Do you think the American people should be taxed more, 
like many Democrats think, or do you feel that cutting taxes is the 
right thing to do, both fiscally and morally, like many Republicans 
believe? Do you get tired of giving more and more of your money to 
Washington, or do you think that you need to give more of your fair 
share?
  Two out of every three Americans think they pay too much in taxes. 
The Democrat Congress, I might point out on this chart, the Democrat 
Congress increased taxes by $241 billion, the largest tax increase in 
history. But the Republican Congress cut taxes by $223 billion, tax 
cuts that would have given families needed relief and would have 
spurred economic growth.
  Sadly, the President vetoed these tax cuts. Just look: These are the 
facts. Under Clinton's tax increases, they imposed in 1994 $115 billion 
on the so-called rich. To them the rich is anyone that makes over 
$90,000.
  Gasoline tax, they put a gasoline tax on the so-called rich, $4.3 
cents a gallon, that amounted to $31 billion. They raised the Medicare 
payroll tax by $29 billion. They raised the Social Security benefit 
tax. They taxed senior citizens in this country by $25 billion. They 
put a tax on corporate and business by $32 billion. They did expand the 
EITC that saved $2 billion, and then raised another $11 billion, for a 
total of $240 billion.
  Now, that did the Republican Congress do, that was vetoed by the 
President? We cut taxes on 30 percent health insurance deduction by $5 
billion. We raised the earnings limit test. The earnings limit is where 
when senior citizens make over $11,520, then they are penalized by 
higher taxes. We raised that limit to $30,000, and we hope next year to 
repeal it altogether. That saved senior citizens $6 billion.
  We had a $500 per child tax credit, that was $150 billion, vetoed by 
the President. We had a medical savings account that saved $2 billion, 
vetoed by the President. We had a capital gains tax cut. Now, this is 
the so-called tax cut for the rich. But you tell a small farmer that 
just sold their farm, or you tell your parents who are trying to sell 
their house in order to take care of themselves in their retirement 
years, they have to pay huge capital gains taxes. We cut it by $35 
billion. Vetoed by the President.
  We expanded the use of investment retirement accounts by $12 billion, 
vetoed by the President. We even gave estate tax relief, that is 
inheritance tax relief, so you could pass on what you worked for all 
your life to your children, we cut it by $12 billion, vetoed by the 
President. This comes to a total tax cut package of $223 billion.
  The third issue is wasteful Washington spending. Do you think we need 
more wasteful Washington spending programs? Or do you think that 
Washington should spend less of your hard-earned money?
  Do you support questionable Washington spending on pork-barrel 
projects inserted by Washington insiders? Well, 71 percent of the 
American people support reducing funding for all Government agencies.
  The Democrat Congress, I might say, on Government spending and under 
the line-item veto, the Democrat Congress passed spending bills that 
increased spending by $8 billion. It also tried to pass a pork-laden 
spending package, which they mistakenly named an economic stimulus 
package, a package that paid for efficient atlases or building swimming 
pools, to the tune of $3.2 billion. Have you ever heard of midnight 
basketball? That was in their stimulus package. they also gave the IRS 
$148 million more to get involved in your personal life. They even gave 
$800,000 to whitewater canoeing teams.
  The Republican Congress though, the Republican Congress cut $43 
billion in real wasteful Washington spending. The Republican Congress 
also passed a line-item veto to get rid of these pork-barrel spending 
projects, which the President did sign into law. We give him credit for 
that.
  The next President of the United States, starting in January of next 
year, will be able to use for the first time in the history of the 
United States, the line-item veto.
  The fourth issue is Congressional reform. Are you concerned that the 
Congress is out of touch, that special interests and lobbyists have too 
much power over what happens in Washington, that Members of Congress 
should live under the same laws as everyone else?

  Ninety-two percent of the American people are concerned that special 
interests and lobbyists have too much power over what happens in 
Congress.
  The Democrat Congress failed to pass any, any, Congressional reform. 
They failed to pass a law that required Congress to live under the laws 
it passes on everyone else. It also failed to pass any reform regarding 
ethics or lobbyist influence.
  The Republican Congress succeeded in passing all kinds of reforms. It 
passed a Congressional compliance law, making it certain that Members 
of Congress live under the laws it passes on everyone else. I guarantee 
you, Members of Congress' eyes are growing bigger and bigger when they 
have the notion of an OSHA inspector coming in and inspecting their 
offices, they get an EOC complaint filed against them, or many other 
ways. Right now we have labor unions on the Hill trying to organize our 
employees. It has a lot of Members thinking about living in the real 
world, and it has changed their thinking about what this body does in 
imposing regulations on the rest of the country.
  We also ban the gifts that Members can accept from lobbyists and 
require greater disclosure of lobbyist activities. We cut our committee 
staff by one-third. We eliminated ghost voting.

[[Page H6492]]

Now, in committee, in order for a Member's vote to count he has got to 
be sitting in that chair and raise his hand and vote. No more ghost 
voting.
  We have gone on and on with all kinds of reforms and opening this 
House up and giving it back to the people. These are real reforms 
desired by the American people.
  The fifth legislative issue, welfare reform. Now, do you support a 
complete overhaul of the welfare system? Should we create a system 
where able-bodied Americans must work? That ends the cycle of 
dependency and despair? That limits the time people can spend 
collecting welfare without working?
  Well, 71 percent of the American people support a mandatory 2-year 
cutoff for welfare without work. The Democrat Congress under welfare 
reform produced nothing, nothing, to end welfare as we know it. Not one 
proposal in the 103d Democrat Congress even passed out of the full 
committee. And this is when they controlled both houses and they had 
the President of the United States at the other end of Pennsylvania 
Avenue, who promised the American people in 1992 that he would end 
welfare as we know it.

                              {time}  2015

  Not one proposal got out of a full committee. But the Republican 
Congress produced far-reaching welfare reform that placed time limits, 
work requirements, and other incentives that give poor people a hand 
up, not a handout.
  The President vetoed this plan twice. Now, we are going to send it to 
him again. Maybe he will wake up and honor his promises and will not 
veto it, because we are going to send him another welfare reform 
package.
  The sixth legislative issue: Health care reform. Now, do you think we 
need government-run health care, where your family's health care 
decisions are made by bureaucrats based in Washington? Or should we 
have commonsense health care reform that allows families to make their 
own health care decisions, allows people who change jobs to take their 
health care with them, and weeds out waste, fraud, and abuse from the 
health care system?
  The gentleman from Arizona, who spoke right before me, laid this out 
perfectly and eloquently. By the time the Democrat Congress gave up on 
the Clinton health care plan, a majority of Americans thought it would 
hurt health care quality and drive up health care costs. The Democrat 
Congress tried but failed to pass out of either House the President's 
huge government-run health care proposal.
  The Republican Congress has passed a health care reform which will 
guarantee portability with no preexisting conditions. It creates 
medical savings accounts, it cuts down on frivolous lawsuits, and cuts 
out waste, fraud, and abuse in the health care system. We expect this 
measure to get to the President's desk in the next few days and we hope 
the President will sign it.
  Part of the health care debate includes saving Medicare. Do you think 
that Congress should take responsible steps to rescue Medicare for the 
next generation, or do you prefer that the Congress put off until later 
any commonsense changes to the Medicare system, despite the 
overwhelming evidence that the system is going broke faster than 
previously anticipated? Should Congress pass Medicare reforms that will 
weed out waste, fraud, and abuse, as the Republicans want; or should it 
increase payroll taxes on working Americans to keep the current system 
in place, as the Democrats prefer?
  The Medicare trustees, which include members of the President's own 
Cabinet, have concluded that Medicare is going broke faster than 
previously anticipated.
  The Democrat Congress failed to enact any of these reforms of the 
Medicare system that will save it for the next generation, but the 
Republican Congress, this Congress, passed Medicare reforms which will 
maintain a growth rate of 7.2 percent in the program. A growth rate.
  Now, a lot of Americans around the country are watching these 
commercials, millions of dollars spent buying commercials that claim 
that we cut Medicare, that we have slashed Medicare, that we are going 
to throw seniors out on the street. But in our plan we allow Medicare 
to grow faster than health care in the private sector, at the same time 
we are trying to weed out the waste and fraud and promoting greater 
choices in health care for seniors, which raises the quality of care 
for senior citizens.
  The seventh legislative issue: Legal reform. Do you support 
commonsense legal reforms? Do you think trial lawyers make too much 
money filing frivolous lawsuits in this country? Do you think trial 
lawyers have too much influence on the White House? Two-thirds of 
southern California voters are afraid that either they or a loved one 
will someday be a victim of lawsuit abuse.

  The Democrat Congress failed to even try to enact any significant 
reforms of our legal system, but the Republican Congress enacted, over 
the President's veto, securities litigation reform which will make it 
more difficult for trial lawyers to file frivolous lawsuits, and we 
also passed a product liability reform. Unfortunately, the President 
vetoed that, and we are working right now to try to get the votes to 
overturn his veto.
  The eighth legislative issue: Immigration reform. Now, do you support 
giving illegal immigrants welfare benefits available to American 
citizens; or do you think that we need to make some commonsense changes 
to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to get welfare? Do you 
believe that illegal immigration is becoming one of the biggest 
problems in America today; or do you think that it is all blown out of 
proportion by the media? Well, 83 percent of the American people favor 
a lower level of immigration.
  Now, the Democrat Congress failed to pass any significant reform of 
immigration policies when they controlled the Congress and the White 
House. The Republican Congress has passed significant immigration 
reform that would make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to get 
welfare, while making it more difficult for illegal immigrants to enter 
the country.
  And, finally, the legislation that is so important to all of us, and 
that is crime. Do you think anticrime initiatives should fund more 
social welfare programs; or should it make the death penalty more 
effective? Seventy-nine percent of the American people support the 
death penalty for murderers.
  The Democrat Congress, in fighting crime, passed a crime bill, signed 
by the President, which would increase spending on prevention programs 
for things like midnight basketball.
  The Republican Congress passed a crime bill, a real crime bill. It 
was signed by the President, and we got to give him credit for that, 
which would reform the death penalty procedure to end all these endless 
appeals, a process that has frustrated the American people, all these 
endless appeals by death row inmates.
  Of course, there are other issues that are not reflected on this 
chart, issues such as regulatory reform, an issue very close to my 
heart as a former small businessowner. But do you think we need more 
Washington power, more crazy Washington regulations, more Washington 
mandates? Eighty-two percent of the American people believe that the 
Government is intruding more and more on their personal rights and 
freedom.
  The Democrat Congress expanded on the regulatory state of earlier 
Congresses, putting more and more regulations on small- and medium-
sized firms, costing jobs. The Republican Congress worked to clean up 
the regulatory environment, bringing common-sense, sound science, and 
cost-benefit analysis to regulations that come from the executive 
branch, to make regulations work better, to make regulations work more 
efficiently, to make regulations actually do some good.
  Mr. Speaker, this Republican Congress can best be described as 
remarkable. We are doing the people's business the way that they want 
it done. Democrats have taken to calling the Republicans extremists. I 
say that defending the status quo is extreme. Defending the disastrous 
Democrat Congress is extreme. Defending a broken welfare system is 
extreme. Defending wasteful Washington spending is extreme. Defending 
the largest tax increase in the history of this country is extreme.
  Make no mistake about it, when the Democrats ran the Congress, they 
did an extremely bad job. So, I urge my colleagues to remember this 
very simple point. Extremism in the defense of

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status quo is no virtue. And, sadly, that is all the liberal left has 
to offer these days.

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