[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 14]
[House]
[Page 18942]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       CENSORSHIP BY THE MAJORITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I've been in this House for a 
long time and I've served with a number of Presidents. I've served with 
a number of Democrat and Republican Speakers. I've served with 
colleagues that are very good friends of mine that are Democrats and 
Republicans, and I've never had a problem getting along with them. And 
even though we have strong differences with my Democrat colleagues, at 
least I felt they were fair most of the time. In fact, they always 
tried to be fair. And I've talked to the majority leader about 
problems. We've talked to a lot of the Members that are chairmen of 
committees about problems, and they've been very fair in most cases. 
But I have never, ever seen anything like this.
  This is a chart that shows the Democrats' health care plan. We've 
been talking about it tonight. Kevin Brady worked this up, and it's 
very, very accurate. It shows all of the committees or agencies that 
are going to be created that the American people are going to have to 
go through to get health care. There are 31 new Federal agencies, 
commissions and mandates that will come between the patient and their 
doctor.
  Now, we have had problems dealing with the post office. The post 
office has had their stamps going up because they're not making the 
profit that they should. We have problems with HHS. We have problems 
with the automobile industry now that's now called Obama Motors. We 
have all kinds of problems right now because government cannot handle 
the things that the private sector can.
  Now, we do need to improve health care. We need to make some changes 
that will be positive, and the Republicans have a plan to do that, but 
to say that that is something that we should not show the American 
people is really tragic. It is censorship. The American people have a 
right to know. We're their elected representatives.
  I represent almost 700,000 people in Indiana, and a lot of them are 
calling, asking what this new health care plan's going to do to them, 
and we wanted to send this out to those people so that they could see 
with their own eyes what they're going to have to go through to get 
health care, how much it's going to cost and how long it will take. But 
they're saying, the Democrats are saying we cannot send this out to our 
constituents. That is just wrong. It's censorship. And in all years 
I've been in this body, I've never seen anything like this.
  There have been a lot of differences with the Speakers of the 
Democrats in the past, but there's never, ever been anything like this. 
And I'd say to the Speaker if she were here tonight, ``Change this, 
Madam Speaker. This is something that even you should never tolerate, 
the censorship of a Member of Congress from telling his constituents 
what's really going on around here, especially when their health care 
is concerned.''

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