Austin Scott: “I rise to speak and to urge our colleagues to please vote and pass this passage. Now, the most important part, and, of…”

“I rise to speak and to urge our colleagues to please vote and pass this passage. Now, the most important part, and, of course, all of it is very important, but there is one part that I want to emphasize that is so important on the second part; and I take quite a distaste at how the gentleman referred to that as pork, because the children's health program is not pork. In my State of Georgia, there are 273,000 children who will go without their insurance or health care if we do not pass this measure. Now, yes, we must get the funding to the troops; they are in need, and we certainly want to get the funding there. But let me just urge those in the minority on the other side of the aisle that many of these 273,000 children who are in Georgia without health insurance belong to the soldiers who are serving in Iraq, and we have been working feverishly in each step of the way to make sure we had the SCHIP program included. And I want to make sure we include this all the way, and urge the President to sign it when we get there.”