Don Nickles: “Well, I will tell my colleague, all we had from CBO on the Senator's amendment was one page that said, one, it never…”

“Well, I will tell my colleague, all we had from CBO on the Senator's amendment was one page that said, one, it never went State by State and, two, it said $394 billion and it said it was not based on legislative language. We had nothing to score off of from what was provided for by CBO or by the Senator, except for the Senator's word that he had an e-mail that said the States net out about even. I did have work that was done by HHS, and it may not have included every extrapolation, but they did compute the cost of the low-income benefit and how much that would cost the States to make the match, and it is in the billions of dollars, to the tune of $5 billion for some States. Maybe some States would come out better. I am not sure. But that is my point. This is not the way to legislate. This is legislating as if we are going to legislate on the back of an envelope. It is almost as if Senator Daschle said, do not go to committee, do not have a markup, here is $400 billion, $500 billion, $600 billion, or $800 billion and can we not cobble together 60 votes? That is a crummy way to legislate.”