David Thomas

Mr. Speaker, this bill establishes the United States Capitol Police Memorial Fund on behalf of the families of detective John Michael Gibson and Private First Class Jacob Joseph Chestnut. I want to make sure people understand that this…

I rise for just a moment to thank the Senator from Nebraska and the Senator from Iowa for their leadership on this agricultural issue that we have before us. I join as an original cosponsor to the effort. It seems to me that clearly there…

I want to speak generally about credit unions and also on the amendment, if I may. I wanted to talk about credit union legislation because it is one of the most important things we will be doing, certainly, this year. I have spent many…

I think it might be useful just to remember where the prudent layperson language in the Republican provision and in the Democrat provision came from. It came from the changes that were made in the Medicare program. I think when you examine…

The current system is fatally flawed. What we are doing is simply working on the edges. The only way to fundamentally deal with the problems in our health insurance area is to empower consumers, empower them with the wherewithal to…

some of this debate has literally taken my breath away. If anyone listening to this debate wonders how in the world Republicans could get away with treating Americans the way we do, listening to the Democrats, I ask them to just look at…

my commitment may be useful, but it is not sufficient. Obviously, it is the leadership that has made the commitment. So when I tell the gentleman from Massachusetts that we are going to get it done during this period, it is from the…

I am not the original guarantor, but I will renew that guarantee from the original guarantor, the Majority Leader, that we will finish campaign reform debate prior to the August recess.

the gentleman once again does make a meal of a term which I used in an attempt to determine whether or not someone wanted to be included in a unanimous consent or a motion. In using the term ``serious'' it seems to me that someone who may…

I just raise the question again and urge the leadership to give some consideration to a biennial budget, where we would make a budget for two years and then have a chance for oversight, have a chance for the agencies to know what they are…

I asked to offer this amendment. As I said during general debate, this will be offered to any major substitute that has a severability clause. I talked earlier about the fact that when the first Federal Election Campaign Act was passed…

Mr. Chairman, we are finally here, and I rise in strong opposition, unless my colleagues are surprised, to Shays-Meehan and their bill. Last week this House defeated a constitutional amendment that was authored by the minority leader, the…

if we would listen to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Kennelly), who just spoke, what we would have to believe is that the business world did not exist prior to the invention of the Internal Revenue Tax Code; that corporations offer…

I am hopeful that today we will come to some conclusion and come to an end in the tobacco controversy that has gone on for a very long time now. I think there are several things which seem to have a consensus. One is that we should make…

today as the Chairman of the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs I submit S. Res. 240, a resolution expressing the sense of the Senate with respect to democracy and human rights in Laos. In 1975, the Pathet Lao party supplanted…

I yield myself 8 minutes. Madam Chairman, as we observed under the rule that was passed, we are beginning a process which is one of the more open processes in the history of the House of Representatives. In the area of campaign reform, we…

I would like to bring some of the fundamentals in focus, if I might. We have heard a piece of legislation referred to on our side of the aisle as Shays/Meehan. We have heard that same legislation referred to on the other side of the aisle…

I want to, first of all, congratulate the chairman of the committee and the Senator from Montana, the ranking member, at having done what I think is an excellent job with a most difficult issue, an issue where you take a vast amount of…

reclaiming my time, frankly, as a Member of this side of the aisle, to say that the President said we should take this money away from veterans certainly is no reason to do so as far as I am concerned.

reclaiming my time, if it does not make any difference, why not call it by its proper name, Shays/Meehan?

Reclaiming my time, did the gentleman or the gentleman's staff ever call the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Ways and Means? The answer is if you did everything you could to work it out, it seems to me the subcommittee of…

Mr. Chairman, I certainly do want to thank the chairman of the Committee on National Security and the ranking member, respectively the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), first of all…

Mr. Chairman, Medigap is a wraparound insurance program. There are ten standardized Medigap programs that are made available by HCFA. The argument is that these military retirees will be giving up their Medigap insurance. Now, I know as…

reclaiming my time, when I feel strongly about an issue and I believe that folks are not being treated fairly, I do get impassioned.

The one line you continue to refer to is the transfer of funds from the endangered HI trust fund, which is scheduled to go bankrupt in a short number of years. That is why we have the Medicare Commission, to protect those funds. What I…