Victor Fazio: “I am very disappointed at this point. I voted for the budget resolution, and I looked forward to the bipartisan…”

“I am very disappointed at this point. I voted for the budget resolution, and I looked forward to the bipartisan cooperation we saw then put in place so we could vote today to send this bill to conference in the same bipartisan manner. But the bill comes up short. We do not need a provision to take the Hyde language on abortion and make it permanent law. We need to pay more attention, for example, to the way in which we try to extend health care to the 10 million kids in our society that are not covered by insurance today. First of all, we need an outreach program, because we know there are 3 million of them that are currently eligible for Medicaid who are not part of it. We need to expand the Medicaid program to try to broaden coverage throughout our States. On top of that, we need insurance reforms that will make it possible for parents to buy insurance for their children if the children do not get it where they work, or if the children are not covered. Most of all, we need to work with the States to go after the kids of the working-poor families who are not covered, but simply, to make a grant to the States and tell them they can use it for almost any purpose is going to do nothing more than supplant existing State funds. We need to expand affordable insurance coverage and not simply go through a shell game with State and Federal dollars. There are ways we can make this a better bill. I hope I can support it when it comes back from conference.”