Medicare is joint, State and Federal. If you look at the combined reductions in spending in the Medicaid Program, their proposal is recklessly, dangerously different than either the President or the coalition proposal.

I rise to speak on this bill with a very unique association with the subject matter. On February 3, 1993, after a frantic day as a Member of Congress representing the State of North Dakota, I went to National Airport, met my wife who also…

for 8 years I had the privilege of representing North Dakota as its State insurance commissioner. During that time I evaluated the health insurance crises experienced by families all across the State. While undoubtedly there were many…

I want to tell you at the outset that I feel badly all of you have to remain tonight for the debate preceding the vote. We asked the chairman to roll the vote. We are going to be here tomorrow. We might have had an extended debate, not…

This bill is not about desperately needed workers to fulfill jobs. This is about having a cheap supply of labor to hold wages down. The have been some in favor of immigration reform that want to have it both ways: Crack down on…

as my colleagues know, in the farm bill debate there is a character to this debate different than other farm bill debates. In the past, rural Representatives, Republicans and Democrats, stood together fighting for rural America. That has…

the fate of hundreds of sugar beet farmers that I represent and hundreds of millions of workers that I represent turn on this debate. But it is not their interests I want to talk to Members about. I want to talk to Members about our…

Mr. Chairman, I want to take issue with a couple of things the preceding speaker... I had a problem with this bill, a huge problem.

I have in my hand the Congressional Record of the consideration of the rules from the preceding farm bills back to 1965. By my reading, none has been considered under a rule as restrictive as the one considered today. Second, your…

this morning's front page of the Washington Post quotes the Senate majority leader with a very succinct comment, one which finds broad agreement all across the State of North Dakota. It says, ``People should work for their money.'' Yet the…

as a Member of this body, all too often, I have seen debates involve pressing problems and yet no real solutions, no meaningful answers. I am dumbfounded at this debate today, because we are dealing with no meaningful problem, and…

Mr. Chairman, delay it; study it; review it: How many times has Congress dragged its heel and sidetracked legislation that the people of this country want, but well-placed inside lobbyists are desperately trying to stop? That is what the…

in the history of this Chamber there have undoubtedly been some unbelievably hypocritical statements made from this well, but I do not think there are any more hypocritical statements ever made than those coming to the microphone…

I recognize the legitimacy of the concern he seeks to address. Speaking from the upstream perspective on the Missouri River, there is a word of reservation I want to advance about dealing in an appropriations bill with the minutiae of the…

it has been a contentious, partisan week in the House of Representatives, and much of the division has involved the Medicare Program. The budget passed by this House yesterday on a largely partisan vote imposes cuts of $284 billion that…

we had a long day in the House Committee on the Budget yesterday. I am here to tell Members about one aspect of the Republican plan to balance the budget that they do not want to talk much about. That is about the deep cuts in Medicare…

I believe attained age rating of the Medicare supplement business generally is inappropriate. I think that it is dead wrong for people whose finances are diminishing in advancing age, whose health is deteriorating in advancing age, to be…

Mr. Chairman, Medicare select is an issue I have followed for several years. I am the only former insurance regulator in the 104th Congress. At the time the Medicare Select Program came into being, I was regulating the insurance market in…

this debate brings up two points of frustration that I have got with Congress: The first is partisanship. There are technical policy questions that come before this House and they do not need to be debated in a bashing, partisan manner…

the Committee on Rules has quite possibly wiped out the last chance to get a meaningful deduction for those millions of Americans struggling every month to pay their own health insurance. I offered an amendment which would have allowed 80…

Mr. Speaker, there will be precious little bipartisan agreement in the House today as we begin the upcoming rescission debate, so it is very appropriate we recognize our bipartisan moments as we find them. The proposal before us to reduce…

activities occurring in the 104th Congress this week make very clear the warped priorities and bad economics of the Republican's contract on America. The warped priorities are evident in the programs subject to deep and painful spending…

the temperature reached 15 below zero in North Dakota last night. Unfortunately, the discomfort of the cold was made much worse by the anxiety caused by the news that all of the funds for home heating assistance to the poor had been…

I am not much of a statistician, but when we are talking about children and nutrition, this is what I think it is all about. The opening statement of the National School Lunch Act of 1946 includes the words, ``It is hereby declared as a…

I find it highly ironic that the bill before us takes flexibility away from North Dakota's prison plan to make people serve 85 or greater of their sentences. I might add, North Dakota has people serving a longer portion of their sentence…