Roy Blunt

I wish to speak for a few minutes today about Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan inspired freedom and changed the world. Maybe nobody said that better than former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in a prerecorded eulogy that was played…

I support the amendment the Senator from Kentucky has offered that would repeal the health care bill and make us start again looking at how we make the health care system work better. I am honored and humbled to get to sit at the same desk…

I rise again today because southwest Missourians keep telling me that they're expecting us to keep our eye on the ball. The most important thing they want us working on in the House is jobs--that's J-O-B-S, Madam Speaker. But most of the…

Mr. Speaker, clearly the country would like to see the right things done for the economy. I think this bill fails to do many of the basic things it should have done and does the things that we shouldn't have done. It doesn't end…

I thank the gentleman for yielding and thank he and Congresswoman Fudge for bringing this bill to the floor. I'm honored to be here on the floor with my good friend, Mr. Hoyer. We first brought this concept of healthy athletes to the floor…

I want to recognize, along with my other colleagues, the Silver Star Families of America. This bill does that. It designates the 1st of May as Silver Star Service Banner Day. Silver Star Families of America is not only reflective of all…

I don't think, Mr. Speaker, this bill improves what works and fixes what is broken, which should be our goal. But that is not the main reason, Mr. Speaker, we should not be proceeding today. The main reason is not that it is not the best…

The Washington Post today on the front page said: Pelosi may try to pass health bill without a vote. May try to pass health bill without a vote. I didn't even think that was possible, but apparently The Washington Post and the Speaker of…

I appreciate the work Mr. Gordon and Mr. Hall have done to get this bill to the floor. In fact, Missouri State University, right next to my home in Springfield, has a leading project going on in nanotechnology. I think it is important. I…

That is powerful. That is very helpful.

I yield myself 2 minutes. As I have returned to a more active role in the Energy and Commerce Committee, Madam Speaker, in this Congress, I will say I was surprised not to have a markup of this bill. We don't have to reauthorize this…

In the final bill, we assume that 65 percent of the children receiving the benefit wouldn't get the benefit anymore. It seems to me this bill needs more work, would have benefited from a committee hearing. It doesn't prioritize poor kids…

I think we are here today on the minority side as perhaps victims of our own success in the last Congress. We clearly were able to use this as the only tool that we often had available to us, and we used it with great success. We used it…

We've known that we were going to face this deadline for about 8 months now or for at least 6 months now. As to the process there of going through suspension, I would just tell my friend that I think, on a suspension bill, if this has…

Well, to make the point, I'm not sure in my statement there that I mentioned a veto-sustaining majority. I'll just point out, if we had that veto-sustaining number, rather, it would also mean that the bill wouldn't pass and that it would…

So I'm certainly hoping that we deal with this important issue of physician reimbursement. I wish we could have done it with a bill that would have been developed sometime in the last 6 months, but we have some concern about that and, I…

I was actually pleased to hear two things there. One is I heard my good friend use the word ``drilling'' in a positive sense, and that's good news.

I believe for those things that look toward better solutions for the future, better conservation now, we all should be focused there. We also should be focused on using American resources, and frankly asking every question why they haven't…

I think importing oil is bad. I think importing gas and paying somebody to take that raw material of oil and turn it into gas is a worse idea. It's hard for me to believe that people that run refineries would be doing that if the…

And two is the numbers I see for the deep water drilling of natural gas indicate that there is an 18-year supply in the deep water. If you're right, and there's four times that supply on public lands that could be drilled on, I suppose…

I, too, share the concerns that, for all the time that the House has dealt with this whole issue of extended unemployment benefits going back to 1981, we have never before left this up to the States to decide how this Federal money would…

In that regard, has any conclusion been reached or not about whether tax increases similar to the ones that the House sent over to the Senate or other ways to pay for the ongoing expenses of the GI Bill that we all hope that we can arrive…

On gas prices, as I am sure you have noticed, Republicans have been talking about gas prices a lot this week. We'd like to see some legislation scheduled that would allow more exploration, more American security in our energy sector. Is…

Well, I thank my friend for yielding. And certainly we do have a disagreement here on how to move forward. I tend to agree with the idea that the only way to rectify this and not have future court challenges is to send a bill to President…

I will say that in that case, nobody in the House ever knew that any changes had been made, and it was alleged that somehow we were going to be subject to Ethics Committee investigations. I would say in this case that my principal concern…