John Culberson: “this bill should be defeated because it is irresponsible and absolutely fiscally dangerous to pass a piece of…”

“this bill should be defeated because it is irresponsible and absolutely fiscally dangerous to pass a piece of legislation like this with an open-ended obligation on the U.S. Treasury. The bill should be defeated because, for all practical purposes, no private insurer will ever write coverage again in this area because they can now count on the U.S. Treasury to pay for this coverage. And the bill should be defeated because of its massive potential cost that the CBO has scored it, a 10-year cost of about $10.4 billion. But I think probably the most important reason this bill should be defeated is one that we, as stewards of the Treasury, need to keep in mind on every bill, on every amendment, on every vote that involves spending a dollar of the taxpayers' money, that all of us in Congress should keep in mind the single, in my mind, most important fact that I have run across as a Member of Congress, and that is that David Walker, the Comptroller General of the United States, the director of the Government Accountability Office, has estimated that in order to pay off the existing obligations of the Federal Government, both direct and indirect, the existing obligations of the Federal Government are so massive that every American would have to buy $170,000 worth of Treasury bills today in order to pay off the debt, the interest on the national debt, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security.…”