Trent Lott: “This bill hurts no one. This is a positive bill. The results of this bill will be to help people, all people…”

“This bill hurts no one. This is a positive bill. The results of this bill will be to help people, all people, including--and I believe especially--the elderly who now have to bear the burden of so many of the Federal regulations through additional taxes and in many cases property taxes. This is a way to begin to help the American people by getting the onerous mandates of the Federal Government and all the problems it creates and all the taxes off the backs of people. We should not be trying to anticipate, in this legislation, S. 1, any and all of the types of circumstances that would justify a waiver in future legislation. This legislation fully anticipates that such circumstances will exist, probably, and allows the full Senate to judge those cases on a case-by-case basis. Several amendments have been offered. I guess others will be offered that would remove additional categories from coverage by the bill. I have a lot of questions about this. How do you define frail elderly as distinguished from sick elderly or just elderly? My mother, heaven help her, is 82 years old. She has a bum knee. She does not get around too well. The bill already has an exemption for age. Would that not take care of this problem?”