Joe Barton: “Madam Speaker and distinguished Members of the House of Representatives, I have in my hand a letter dated September 27…”

“Madam Speaker and distinguished Members of the House of Representatives, I have in my hand a letter dated September 27 from myself and the majority of the Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee asking Speaker Pelosi to refer the SCHIP bill to the Energy and Commerce Committee so that we truly could have a bipartisan compromise. If we could defeat this motion to postpone the veto, we could then move to a motion to refer the bill to the committee and honor the letter that I have sent to our distinguished Speaker. We are going to sustain the President's veto whenever that vote occurs. In the history of the Republic, there have been over 2,000 vetoes of bills. Only 106 of those vetoes have been overridden. This will not be 107. We will sustain the veto when that vote occurs and then hopefully we will begin the bipartisan process that should have begun back in January when the new majority took over. When that day comes, the debate is not going to be about whether there should be a SCHIP program. There should be. The debate is not going to be whether we should cover low-income children. We already do that under Medicaid. The debate is not going to be whether we should cover children between 100 and 200 percent of poverty. We already do that. The debate is going to be, should we cover adults? Most Republicans say no, we should not cover adults. The debate is going to be about illegal residents of our country. Should we cover illegal residents?”