Chris Van Hollen: “I thank my friend, Ms. Slaughter. Mr. Speaker, I do believe that the budget agreement that was reached was a small but…”

“I thank my friend, Ms. Slaughter. Mr. Speaker, I do believe that the budget agreement that was reached was a small but positive step forward, and I plan to talk about that a little later today; but what I want to talk about right now is the abuse of process that has taken place in the last 8 hours and the changing of the terms of that agreement. During that agreement, the Democrats from the House and others put forward a proposal that said, as we deal with the budget issues, we should also deal with what we call the doc fix, making sure that doctors are fully reimbursed to help Medicare patients, but that we should also help folks who are about to lose their unemployment compensation. That is what we said, and we put it on paper and offered it. We said, if we do a doc fix for 3 months, we should do a UI extension for 3 months, and if we do a doc fix for a year, we should deal with the UI issue for a year; but that was not part of the budget negotiation even though we wanted it to be. Chairman Ryan acknowledged that yesterday as did Senator Murray. They said we wouldn't deal with either of those two issues--the doc fix or the UI--as part of the budget agreement but that we would deal with them outside of that agreement. Yet the ink was barely dry, Mr. Speaker, on that agreement before the House Republicans and the Speaker of the House put forward a rule that injected the doc fix, which we support, into the budget agreement, so it is all going to be one whole thing.…”