Frank Pallone: “One of the things that we both talked about tonight and we are very happy about is the kids' health care initiative…”

“One of the things that we both talked about tonight and we are very happy about is the kids' health care initiative, because now it is up to $24 billion because of the addition of the tobacco tax. But I have to say that in discussions, in debate over the last several months on the kids' health care issue, one of the major concerns of House Democrats, including myself, and we have a health care task force amongst our Democratic Caucus that has articulated this, one of the major concerns is that this money not be drained away and used for purposes unrelated to insuring kids. In one of the aspects of this that we will be discussing and we will be insisting on, and I believe that the White House has been insisting on, is to make sure that built into this program to insure these children at the cost of $24 billion that there are safeguards so that in fact the money is used to insure kids. The Senate version of this bill was a lot better than the House version...”