Congressman David Dreier Radio Address
  October 26, 2007

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TRANSCRIPT:

This is David Dreier.  This week, California confronted one of the largest wildfires in our nation’s history. More than a million of our fellow citizens were affected.  Thousands lost their homes and businesses.  In some places, the fires still rage, and brave fire fighters remain in the field working to put them out.  I had a chance to see the devastation firsthand with Governor Schwarzenegger and President Bush.  It was remarkable.  But even more remarkable was the relief effort mobilized by local, state, and federal governments, and more wonderful volunteers than they could handle.  Working together, officials at every level of government aided evacuees, fought to contain massive fires, and got the recovery effort underway.  I was proud to see so many people working together so well. It was government at its best.  

But back in Washington, unfortunately we saw government at its worst.  The Democratic leadership in Congress was still playing political games with children’s health care.  We are all committed to extending the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, but the Democrats aren’t interested in a real compromise.  They have made this a partisan process from the start, but this week they took it to a new low.   

It’s been barely a week since they held a politically staged veto override vote on a flawed S-CHIP bill.  They knew the vote was destined to fail, but they waited two weeks to hold it so they could run political ads.  Then, on Wednesday, they announced a vote would be held in less than twenty four hours on a new S-CHIP bill, which no one had ever seen.  This announcement came as the fires raged in California and members traveled to be with their constituents in a time of need. Several of us asked Speaker Pelosi to delay the new vote.  We argued that in a time of crisis, politics should be put aside and we should work together.  Surely if we could wait for two weeks to run political ads, we could wait for the urgent needs of the victims of a major natural disaster. In the end, the answer was NO and we saw more of the same from the Democratic Majority.   

The vote went forward with less than a day’s notice, on a cosmetically changed bill that still allowed adults and illegal immigrants to be covered by S-CHIP, still forces two million children from private health insurance to government run care, and still paid for with a massive tax hike.  And once again, the bill did not garner enough support to override a veto.  In fact, the blatantly partisan games resulted in lost votes from the bill’s own supporters. 

It’s no wonder the approval rating for this Congress is barely in the double digits.  The American people want us to work together to solve the problems they face in their everyday lives.  They’re tired of these games.  They want solutions.  We Republicans stand ready to extend and improve S-CHIP.  We’re still waiting for the Democrats to come to the table.