Amory Houghton: “I am really at a loss of words because so much of what I wanted to say has already been stated. Maybe I can approach…”

“I am really at a loss of words because so much of what I wanted to say has already been stated. Maybe I can approach this from somebody who has been in business for a long time and understands what this Congress is trying to do is to extract the Government from onerous administrative tasks, which is hardly in keeping with what we are trying to do to relieve people and businesses to be able to create more jobs. I have been around business a long time, and I know what data collection is; it is important. But when we take a look at this particular issue, clearly the data collected is highly expensive. The GAO has estimated that to create a data bank like this, it would be over $100 million. That is certainly not the intent of Congress, it is not something which is good for business, it is not something which is really good for the employees, and when we take a look at a variety of different businesses that have been contacted, they all agree that this is not necessary, that the administrative burden is onerous, it opens the door to tax retirees on values received, and so why report this? As a matter of fact, I think we all agree with this. As a matter of fact, I do not think that there is any argument when we are talking about this issue, H.R. 2685. It is a good issue; we all agree it is a bipartisan approach. Where we get off the tracks is when we start getting political and we start messing around in this whole field of health reform.”