Chuck Grassley: “I came to the Chamber to speak on an oversight issue on which I have been working for well over a year. But before I…”

“I came to the Chamber to speak on an oversight issue on which I have been working for well over a year. But before I speak on that subject, I wish to take advantage of the opportunity to respond to incorrect impressions about the compromise State Children's Health Insurance Program bill on which the House is going to be voting tomorrow. I am speaking as much to Republicans in the House of Representatives as I am responding to some of the points Senator Lott has made. These reminded me that regardless of how many speeches one gives around here, regardless of how many explanations one gives of what our bill does and does not do, nobody listens. We get the same wrong statements being made time after time. I wonder, does anybody ever listen? Maybe they don't like to have Chuck Grassley say it. I was a negotiator for the Republicans. I never had a single Republican tell me since January that they didn't want the SCHIP program reauthorized after a 10-year sunset. I never had one of them say it wasn't a program that was serving a good purpose. I had a lot of people express faults about what is wrong with the present program. Most of those issues have been corrected in the legislation the President vetoed. I finally got people to realize the $5 billion the President put in his budget on top of baseline is not enough to do what we are already doing.”