Don Nickles: “Not just yet. I will make a final comment, because this is of interest. Yesterday and today, we have spent several hours…”

“Not just yet. I will make a final comment, because this is of interest. Yesterday and today, we have spent several hours debating $16 million. I am trying to save for taxpayers, and basically save it for Medicare, that $16 million that should stay in Medicare. We should not be raiding the Medicare trust funds to pay for an expansion to hire more Federal employees. We are spending several hours on that. I tell my colleague from Texas and my other colleagues, I spent an hour opposing an expansion of $1.9 billion, and I lost. So this Senate expanded the cost of this bill from $3.3 billion to $5.1 billion, and we did it in an hour. Maybe some people are kind of proud of that. I am not proud of it. Yet, to try to cut $16 million, we have spent several hours. Some people fight very, very hard to expand Government. I think that is a mistake. I think it is a mistake in this bill. It should not be in this bill. When my colleague read the letters, he didn't read all of the letters. It says that HCFA doesn't have enforcement authority over these two bills, and it doesn't have anything to do with the legislation that is before us. I happen to have enough confidence in the State of Massachusetts, the State of California, the State of Michigan, the State of Missouri, and Rhode Island. They care about their people just as much as we do in Washington, DC.”