[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 105 (Wednesday, July 17, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H7662]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  DO WE REALLY NEED A SURGEON GENERAL?

  (Mr. KINGSTON asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, all of us fondly recall President 
Clinton's first Surgeon General, Jocelyn Elders. She is the one whose 
valuable contribution to medicine was to suggest, and let me put this 
delicately, that schoolchildren quit playing with each other and--well, 
never mind. Now, for that bold contribution, which many of my 
colleagues remember, and I am not going to allude to it any more than 
that, but she was run out of office. So now the new Surgeon General has 
come out with a study, but she is playing it safe, daringly sticking 
right in the middle of the road. She has come out with a study paid for 
by thousands of tax dollars that comes out with this revelation:
  ``Exercise is good for you.''
  Yes, I promise, that is her study: Exercise is good for us. Imaging 
the possibilities. Next thing we know, the private sector will be 
coming out with health spa chains.
  Next the Surgeon General plans to study does the sun cause suntan? 
Does the rain get things wet? Does climbing stairs get you higher?
  I ask my colleagues this:
  Do we really need a Surgeon General? Is this the way we should be 
spending tax dollars instead of pursuing real goals?

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