[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 105 (Wednesday, July 17, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H7663-H7664]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   HYPOCRITICAL CRITICISM OF SPEAKER GINGRICH BY THE WHITE HOUSE AND 
                               DEMOCRATS

  (Mr. STEARNS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, I want to read something. President Clinton 
and Vice President Gore said this in their book, ``Putting People 
First'': ``We will scrap the Health Care Financing Administration and 
replace it with a health standard board made up of consumers, 
providers, business, labor, and government.'' No cry from the press 
about that.
  But let us see what the Speaker is being criticized for when he 
talked about ``wither on the vine.'' This is what he really said. The 
Democrats have taken it out of context. What did he say? ``Okay, what 
do you think the Health Care Financing Administration is? It is a 
centralized bureaucracy. It's everything we are telling Boris Yeltsin 
to get rid of. Now, we don't want to get rid of it in round one * * * 
we want it to wither on the vine.''
  Speaker Gingrich was not referring to the Medicare Program, but he 
was referring to the big government bureaucratic machine that processes 
it.

[[Page H7664]]

That is the same thing President Clinton and Al Gore said in their 
book, ``Putting People First.''
  So all this criticism on the Speaker, on his ``withering on the 
vine,'' comment, is hypocritical. President Clinton said the same thing 
about the Health Care Financing Administration. In both cases, no one 
was talking about Medicare. Think about it.

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