Joe Cunningham: “the bill that my friend, the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), was talking about with regard to subvention was…”

“the bill that my friend, the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), was talking about with regard to subvention was written in San Diego by my veterans. It was actually written before I became a Member of Congress in 1990, and we support that particular bill. The gentleman from Mississippi has got good intentions on this. There are many of us that would like this bill to come forward, and we have talked to both the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) and to the Speaker, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert). But let me tell my colleagues something. Before we shut this House down, I would say to my friend, it is important that we move forward. Subvention, Tri-Care, FEHBP, we have promised our military veterans too long that we are going to take care of them. We are losing thousands of World War II veterans every month. If we wait and keep on delaying, those veterans are not going to get the care that was promised to them. We looked at the subvention bill itself. When I originally introduced the subvention bill, we had it as 100 percent. Because of the cost analysis and different reasons, the White House said no, we want to make it a pilot program. They were going to limit it just to two, one in the Senate and one here. It was my bill and my hospital was not even going to get in the subvention mix. I fought tooth, hook, and nail, and we were able to get that expanded. But even then we were stopped.…”