Christopher Shays

And encourage people to pay their taxes. It is estimated we could lose almost $100 billion in revenue, one, because it is not simple enough and, second, that people simply have found a whole host of ways to avoid paying taxes in the course…

I do not know how we do that, though, unless we get our financial base on a firm foundation.

And if my colleague would just yield, I would point out that we are also not just talking about social welfare, we are talking about corporate welfare.

They can. And it is not like the telephone system, where if you were on AT&T and you automatically find you are with Sprint or MCI, no, you stay in the plan. You stay in the traditional fee-for-service. You have to ask to be out and then…

To our credit, that is the one area where Congress has greater control than the President. When we spend and appropriate an item and the President vetoes, we get zero.

But the bottom line to this is that each and every year we vote on about a third of the budget. We do not vote on the interest on the national debt, and we do not vote on half of the budget, which are what we call entitlements, that long…

I think sometimes people look at the debate we have on the floor of the House and it looks like a food fight in a high school cafeteria, but there are significant differences that I think my colleague would agree separate us, and then…

Mr. Chairman, our objective in our budget is to get our financial house in order and balance our Federal budget to save our trust funds for future generations, and to transform our caretaking social and corporate welfare state into what I…

First, we have no increase in copayment in our Medicare, no increase in the deductible, and we keep the premium at 25 percent. There is no increase in premiums. We only increase the premium for the wealthiest in our country who make over…

Medicare under our bill goes from $196 billion to $283 billion. That is a 45-percent increase in spending from this year to the sixth year. Under our Medicaid Program, it grows from $95 billion to $140 billion. Only in this city, when you…

I am grateful that we are seeing a 17 percent increase in the Ryan White funding over last year. I am particularly grateful that we are seeing for the first time the prohibiting of health insurance discrimination against someone who…

Mr. Speaker, Americans have the constitutional right to bear arms and the Government has the constitutional responsibility to regulate that right. Repeal of the assault weapons ban was not and is not part of the Contract With America. It…

If we can end with Mr. Rabin's quote that, ``The politician is elected by the adults to represent the children.''

The bottom line to our Medicare plan is we do not increase copayments, we do not increase deductibles, we allow the premium to stay at 31.5 percent, we provide choice. It is true, we ask the wealthiest of wealthy to pay a higher part for…

We actually have 10 programs we can choose and then variations within those programs, so we have lots of choice and we want seniors to have that same choice.

There will be no money for any department, and any grant and any program for those departments according to Senator Kerrey.

I just would like to thank both of you. You claimed the time, and I thank the gentleman from Maine for doing that and just say that we do live in the greatest country in the world, and we are going to save it. I mean, we are not going to…

That is a great illustration of why it did not happen. There is no way a family of four would have tolerated paying $76,000.

Before the gentleman yields to my colleague, I just want to make sure that we cover this, because we do not want any senior to think that they have to participate in choice. They can keep their traditional fee-for-service, their 1960 Blue…

Really what the gentleman is describing, if the gentleman will yield, he is describing a situation where people think we have a revenue problem, and we know that we have a spending problem. Revenue keeps going up every year. It is just…

First off, the peanut farmers make a killing in this program at the expense of the consumer. If they do not want to be part of the program and make that payment, there is nothing that requires them to do it.

But to respond to your question, the GAO report makes it very clear that the farmers are being paid double the world price. They are being paid over $600 per ton, whereas the world price is closer to $350.

The way this started, we are talking about a baseline, and we figured in inflation. Then we said last year, even though we spend more, it is not an increase in spending. I remember when I was first elected in 1987, I would go back home and…

We have three primary objectives. One is to get our financial house in order and balance our Federal budget; the second is to save our trust funds from insolvency, and ultimate bankruptcy, particularly Medicare; and our third objective is…

My colleague has pointed out a number of myths. We have presented our program. We are proud of our program. We are looking to the President to be an author and not just a critic. We stand ready to work with the President and with our…