George H.W. Bush: “We have other priorities. Let me tell you about health care. My opponent has a plan that would lead to a back-door…”

“We have other priorities. Let me tell you about health care. My opponent has a plan that would lead to a back-door Government takeover of our health care system and would slap a tax on the already overburdened small-business man and small-business woman in this country. I want to unfetter small business, not stick a new tax on them. I have a different approach to health care, the plan I've got to the Congress that the gridlockers refuse to move on. What it says is: Make insurance available to all, the poorest of the poor and everybody else. Get these costs under control. Do something about these malpractice lawsuits. But do not turn the health care over to the Government; would run it like they ran the post office and the bank. We've got a great plan to renew our schools, and God bless the teachers that are out here today. We also have another plan, and that is put the lid on some of these crazy lawsuits that are costing our economy hundreds of millions of dollars, scaring coaches out of the Little League, scaring doctors out of the medical profession. Suing each other too much and caring for each too little, and I want to change it. You might ask, why haven't you done that as President? I'll tell you. We've had proposal after proposal up on Capitol Hill to do it, to change the law. And the gridlocked Congress doesn't dare think about it because they are in the pocket of the trial lawyers association. That's the fact. That is the fact, and I'm going to keep telling the American people that: Blocked by the gridlocked Democrat-controlled Congress. Remember that. You're going to hear a lot about it for 74 days. All right, let me give you another example. I mentioned it last night. On the day I sent the planes over Baghdad--God bless those men and women of Desert Storm--on that day I sent a new energy program to the Congress. It took 43 days to win the Gulf war, but it has taken 533 days, and still counting, to get Congress to send a national energy program down to the White House. That is too long. The Congress is in gridlock. They don't dare move. Too many---- Audience members. Clean the House! Clean the House! Clean the House!”