Health Care

Floor Speech

HEALTH CARE -- (Senate - July 07, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to seek recognition on the issue of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which will be the order of the business of the Senate later this week, and I have an amendment pending there. But before proceeding to that important subject, I would like to make a comment or two about what has occurred on the Senate floor already.

At the outset, I compliment my distinguished colleague from Oregon, who has played such an important leadership role in the Senate generally since coming over from the House, working with him on many items, and taking a very close look at an innovative approach to health care coverage for all Americans. There is no doubt about the need to have that coverage. The question is how we do it, maintaining the essentials of the free enterprise system to avoid the bureaucracy of the so-called Clinton plan from 1993, which put a great bureaucracy between the doctor and the patient.

What Senator Wyden has proposed, along with Senator Bennett, on a bipartisan basis, is very carefully considered--with a significant number of sponsors on both sides--is a good way to proceed, and my staff and I are taking a very close look at that important proposal.

Just on a personal note, while Senator Wyden is a westerner, and some might say I am an easterner, we were both born in Wichita, KS, which may not be a mark of great distinction but worth a 20-second notation on the floor of the Senate. Somebody listening in Wichita this afternoon--my Aunt Rose--watches fastidiously, so I want to give a little salute to the hometown.

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