Tom Tancredo: “first of all let me say that it is a tribute to the work of this committee and to the subcommittee and its chairman that…”

“first of all let me say that it is a tribute to the work of this committee and to the subcommittee and its chairman that it has been very difficult to find the necessary offsets to do what we hope to do in this amendment, and that is to increase the amount for State extended-care facilities program by $7 million. We are, however, proposing to do that, and we do recognize the commitment of the committee, and I want to once again say that it was a very difficult task. I am not here asking for more money. I recognize fully well that the total bill is a very rich bill considering what he had available to him and considering what we had available to us and what the committee had available to work with. It is our hope to convince both the committee and the other Members of the Congress, of the House of Representatives, that we need to shift the priorities to a certain extent, to a very small extent, totaling again as I said only $7 million into the State extended-care facilities program. These are the nursing homes that we build across the country, and these are facilities that, by the way, are built with State matching funds, so it is a bigger bang for the buck that we get for this. The President's budget suggested only a $40 million appropriations level. The committee quite appropriately increased that dramatically. In fact, increased it a hundred percent, increased it to $80 million.”