Christopher Shays: “the bottom line to this is that people have said, ``Well, we got into this over 30 years. It should take us 30 years.''…”

“the bottom line to this is that people have said, ``Well, we got into this over 30 years. It should take us 30 years.'' No, we got into debt in 1 year. We are not looking to pay back the debt. We were simply saying, ``Let us not make the debt any larger.'' So we have a 7-year plan. Frankly, a number of us here have said, ``Let us balance the budget sooner with no tax cut,'' but the issue is ultimately balancing the budget, getting our financial house in order. Mr. Speaker, we are not paying back that debt, we are simply saying, ``Let us not make the debt any larger.'' When you talk about the innovation, we have seen extraordinary innovation on the State level. You were a Governor for 8 years. I can remember that we looked at how you did it when we were in the State of Connecticut, because Delaware was doing innovative programs. We looked at what Tennessee is doing and what Arizona is doing with managed health care for nursing care and so on. Why is it that the working American basically is under managed care, but the elderly, who are under taxpayer expense, and the poor, who are under taxpayer expense, are under the traditional old system of fee-for-service? We are still going to allow them to have fee-for-service, but we are eager to encourage them to get into plans that save money and are more efficient and provide better service.”