[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 151 (Tuesday, September 23, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H8587-H8588]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    McCAIN DEREGULATION AGENDA WOULD BE DISASTROUS FOR MIDDLE CLASS 
                               AMERICANS

  (Mr. PERLMUTTER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. PERLMUTTER. Mr. Speaker, while years of deregulation policies 
have caused the biggest financial crisis in decades, Senator McCain is 
touting himself as the greatest deregulator.
  The Senator has called government regulations unnecessary and 
burdensome, and has said they should be eliminated. Now he wants to 
extend his deregulation agenda to the health insurance industry, 
writing in an opinion op-ed this month, that, ``Opening up the health 
insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have 
done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of 
innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of State-based 
regulation.''
  For 8 years now, the Bush administration has turned a blind eye to 
all the trading, lending and borrowing that is now responsible for the 
Wall Street crisis.

[[Page H8588]]

  Senator McCain now wants to extend that same strategy to the health 
insurance industry? Our Nation's health care system has enough 
problems, and we don't need to exacerbate them by implementing Senator 
McCain's dangerous new deregulation idea.

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