The Progressive Caucus On Health Care

Floor Speech

The Progressive Caucus On Health Care

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Speaker, this is the Special Order hour of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. We come every week to talk with each other and to talk on the House floor about a progressive vision for America, a progressive vision that embraces everybody, where we all do better when we all do better, a progressive vision that says that the greatest moments of American history were when we passed the civil rights bill, when we invested in our infrastructure during the Roosevelt era. The greatest moments in American history were when we passed the 19th Amendment recognizing the right of women to vote. These are the great moments of American history. And this great tradition of a progressive vision for America is what we carry on week in and week out. I want to say that if you want to communicate with us, our Web site is here at the bottom of the page, cpc.grijalva.house.gov.

What I would like to do, Mr. Speaker, is right away turn the microphone over and yield to our caucus cochair, one of the stalwart, big-time fighters who never backs down and always is for the people, who has lived it, who knows it, and who is now representing the people of California in a great struggle to promote a progressive vision, none other than Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey--who, by the way, has more 5 minutes against the Iraq war than anybody else in history. I yield to the gentlelady from California.

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Mr. ELLISON. I actually have a few questions, but I am going to yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Before I do that, I just want to say that if we just took some of these salaries that are out there and put them into providing care for people, maybe we wouldn't have nearly 50 million people without health care and another 25 million without adequate insurance. It's really outrageous. And they're spending about $1.4 million a day to lobby against health care, and that's nothing but pocket change for some of those folks, and I can see why they would do that.

With that, I will yield to the gentleman from Illinois, Congressman Davis.

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Mr. ELLISON. Reclaiming my time, the reform that we are talking about includes employer-based health care, where there couldn't be an exclusion for preexisting conditions. There are the existing government programs, Medicare, Medicaid. Part of the money, if we get the version we are looking for, would be to help States cover everybody for Medicaid.

Then the third thing, this would be new and would include a robust public option. The public option would be a program run by an agency in the government that would be not looking to generate a profit. In that case, would the public option that we have been talking about, would they be reaping a portion of those, what is that, $84 billion in profit? Would that be a cost measure within the public option, if we were able to achieve that?

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