I look forward to this process.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to say I have appreciated your slow gavel so that we could allow the witnesses to finish what they have to say.

If you shift the cost to beneficiaries, how does that get paid for?

Is that high enough?

I would like for the committee, that you would submit to us, all of you, if you have it, evidence that backs up the theory that people go to the doctor more often than they need to.

For anybody to start putting those kind of prescriptions into law really don't make sense to me.

I heard from the president of Seattle University. And he said to me, 'Jim, our charitable deductions will drop, we figure, by at least 40 percent if you start fooling around with the limits that are in the law today.'

I always try to figure out what these hearings are about. I don't know whether the purpose was to panic the charitable community into rushing to Washington to talk about what their deductions are all about.

You got to be the Vice Chair of the charitable giving working group. Congratulations.

I can't understand. Is it we are sort of softening them up for the fact that they are going to get clipped?

If you pass a law, even the threat of passing the law, under the Clinton administration, suddenly health care costs kind of leveled off.

And it seems to me that the issue really here is whether we are going to tear the safety net out, say to seniors, we are not going to cover you.