Steny Hoyer: “I want to rise and speak on behalf of this bill and say that I am probably going to vote to recommit it. But I will…”

“I want to rise and speak on behalf of this bill and say that I am probably going to vote to recommit it. But I will reiterate one more time, this bill is 99.9 percent pure and good. The gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Kolbe) has done an outstanding job. This bill does in fact provide for the needs of the agencies that are within it, it provides funds sufficient for them to carry out their duties in an appropriate way, and it has not included provisions which would undermine their effectiveness. For that I think we owe the chairman of this committee a great deal of thanks because of his conscientious handling of this bill. Unfortunately as the chairman indicates and as we indicated in the debate on the rule, this bill has gotten caught up in four, what could be called extraneous issues. I would suggest, however, that one of them is not really extraneous to the extent that its provision in the bill is an appropriation matter in that it says none of the funds in this bill shall be spent to purchase policies which do not have full coverage for contraception.”