[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 16]
[House]
[Page 22156]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1015
              THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS AND GOOD GOVERNANCE

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Madam Speaker, as a member of the Energy and Commerce 
Committee, which shares jurisdiction over the SCHIP bill, H.R. 3162, I 
would like to express my frustration with the way this bill has been 
rammed through the legislative process.
  Since January, we had only one hearing on the SCHIP program. We did 
not have a legislative hearing on H.R. 3162, which is supposed to be 
the Democrats' signature piece of health care legislation this 
Congress, no markup in subcommittee, and it was written in secret with 
no input from our side of the aisle. In fact, the text of the bill was 
not even provided to members of the committee until 11:33 the night 
before the full committee markup was supposed to take place.
  Madam Speaker, bringing a bill with over $200 billion in authorized 
spending to the floor without allowing the bill to go through the 
proper legislative process is simply poor governance.

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