Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Kentucky for his leadership on this bill. Mr. Chairman, it is so interesting to me. We had a 2,700-page health care bill that basically was a government takeover of health care. What we have heard from so many people in this country is gosh, you know, I wish somebody would have read that bill before they passed it. And the former Speaker said we need to pass the bill, and then we can read it and find out what is in it. One of the things that many of the people did not like that was in that bill was many of these mandatory provisions that were put in place, programs that had been on the books for years that were discretionary programs that all of a sudden became mandatory. And the confusing thing, Mr. Chairman, is there didn't seem to be any consistency. As the subcommittee chairman who spoke before me had said, Mr. Pitts had said, you know, you don't tend to children's hospitals in the same way, you don't tend to nurses and technicians in the same way. But here was this conversion from discretionary to mandatory for teaching hospitals, a total of $230 million, over $40 million a year. Now, it doesn't matter if you need the money or not. It doesn't matter if you know exactly where you are going to use it or not. The money is going to be appropriated. It's put on autopilot. Doesn't matter what we say is going to happen with the government, if we need to reduce it. They're going to get that money. That is why this bill is so important.…”