On the recordMarch 24, 2017
I appreciate all the hard work the Rules Committee chairman has done in this bill. Mr. Speaker, I have the great pleasure of serving on the Rules Committee, but I am the designee to the Budget Committee. This whole process that we are going through is a Budget Committee process. It is called reconciliation. And as folks have talked about it, they have talked about what the Ways and Means Committee has done and what the Energy and Commerce Committee did. But then those two bills come together in the Budget Committee, and we move the process forward. I can't help but notice my colleagues' frustration with the amendments that have been made to this bill along the way. Generally, we celebrate amendments that are made along the way because they improve the work product. We do them together. I point here, Mr. Speaker, to a tweet that the President sent out the day the healthcare bill was introduced. The President said: ``Our wonderful new HealthCare Bill is now out for review and negotiation.'' And that was true. It was out for review so everyone could read it, and it was out for negotiation so that everyone could improve it. We did that in the Budget Committee. We had four motions to instruct that passed in the Budget Committee to provide Medicaid flexibility, to make sure the tax credits were targeted to the right populations, to ensure that able-bodied, working Americans had those incentives to both get health care and be able to go back to work.…
