Maxwell Frost: “Mr. Speaker, even before this conference report has been adopted, we are seeing pieces of the implementing package which…”

“Mr. Speaker, even before this conference report has been adopted, we are seeing pieces of the implementing package which might indeed be considered unfair. Many Members supported the budget agreement because it promised to right a wrong that had been part of the welfare reform legislation enacted in the last Congress. I am referring, of course, to the removal of thousands of elderly disabled legal immigrants from the SSI program. This House agreed during the consideration of the supplemental appropriation to provide funding to keep disabled elderly legal immigrants on the rolls until the Congress had an opportunity to revisit the issue and correct what is an unjustifiable inequity. Yet, Mr. Speaker, the Republican majority is now offering the House what can only be called a bait-and-switch deal.”