William Tauzin: “there is trickery about this place. There is fraud about this House. We could have a motion to recommit forthwith, but…”

“there is trickery about this place. There is fraud about this House. We could have a motion to recommit forthwith, but that is not what happened tonight. What happened tonight was a motion to recommit promptly. My friend, the chairman of Ways and Means, will explain in just a minute the trickery in that motion. You see, that motion has a very special effect regarding this debate tonight and the possibility of us passing a prescription drug benefit for the seniors of America tonight. The gentleman from California will explain it to you in just a minute. But if we were to even consider the proposal offered in this motion to recommit seriously, it is almost identical, I believe, to the proposal that was made before the Committee on Energy and Commerce. It has been scored by CBO now at $971 billion, although our budget, as you know, allocated $350 billion to this effort. It is more expensive than the plan prepared on the Senate side by Senator Bob Graham. The Bob Graham plan is estimated to drive Medicare into insolvency by the year 2016. Just imagine how much sooner Medicare goes bankrupt under the plan our friends on the other side are offering in the motion to recommit. That is saving the Medicare program, driving it into bankruptcy? We are not alone in that assessment.…”