[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 18500]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     AMERICA'S RIGHT TO KNOW MONTH

  (Mr. Ryan of Wisconsin asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I propose that we make August 
America Right to Know month. That means Americans have a right to know 
what this Congress is doing in proposals that change their lives, and 
what I'm talking about is the health care legislation.
  Just a couple of days ago, we marked up this legislation in the Ways 
and Means Committee, about a thousand pages, and it came to us 3 
minutes before midnight the day prior to us marking it up.
  We had an amendment in the committee that said, If we're going to 
impose this new health care system on the American people, Members of 
Congress, themselves, should be put into this system. What happened to 
that amendment? It went down by a party-line vote. Republicans said 
``yes''; Democrats, except for Mr. Davis of Alabama, said ``no.''
  We also said let's recognize the fact that we're taxing people, a lot 
of taxes on people earning less than $250,000. That violates the pledge 
people believed they had in the last election. What was the vote? The 
Republicans said, no, let's not tax people earning less than $250,000; 
the Democrats said, yes, we will continue to tax those people, 
violating this pledge, this promise the American people thought that 
they had on Election Day.
  August ought to be the month where America gets to know what's going 
on.

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