[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9304]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   CENSORSHIP BY FRANKING COMMISSION

  (Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to object to the 
majority Franking Commission's exercise in blatant and transparent 
censorship on a Medicare mailing I and other colleagues of mine wish to 
send to our constituents.
  I'm not allowed to call it the ``Ryan budget'' even though the 
Republicans called it the Ryan budget, because, of course, it has 
become unpopular. I'm not allowed to refer to changing Medicare to a 
voucher system even though Mr. Ryan himself referred to it as a voucher 
system. I must now call it a ``premium support system.''
  These changes, among many others, are censorship at its worst. When 
we don't like something, when it's not going well for us on the 
majority side, we suppress it. This censorship would make former Soviet 
censors blush at the breathtaking nature and sweeping scope of the 
suppression of free expression, of free ideas here in the Nation's 
Capitol.

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