Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Rules Committee, I am sure you are all aware of the process by which this bill is before you today. After beginning with bipartisan staff discussions and open conference meetings on relatively non-controversial matters, the process changed abruptly. The Chairman decided to exclude all of the House Democratic conferees and all but two of the Senate Democratic conferees.

The text of the conference report was not made available to conferees until 1:30 p.m. yesterday, just a half hour before the final conference meeting. The conferees were never given an opportunity to amend this report at that meeting. The Joint Explanatory Statement was not released until the report was filed.

Yet here we are before your committee. We are being told that this committee acting at the behest of the Republican Leadership will report a rule waiving all points of order against the report, including the requirement that there be a 3-day layover of all conference reports that are filed. On top of that there will be a rule that allows for the same day consideration of the conference report - in other words, not even a one-day layover. The conference report was filed in the middle of the night last night.

I find this latter decision to deny all Members the opportunity to read this conference report for a minimum of three days as astonishing. We now know that the Republican leadership treats promises to their own Membership with the same disregard as their promises to the Minority.

The promise that the conference report, along with the joint explanatory statement and CBO cost analysis, would be available for a minimum of three days has been widely reported in the press, based upon reports of remarks of Republican Members. On Friday, November 7, Congress Daily reported the following: "'The thing I'm happiest about is we get three days with the language,' said Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., referring to a promise made by House Speaker Hastert." On November 5, the House Democratic Leaders wrote to the Speaker requesting that his reported promise to share the final conference report with all Republican Members would apply to the Democrats as well.

So much for promises.

Well, there is a simple way to ensure that all Members have a minimum of three days to review this conference report and that is to defeat any rule that waives the House rule that requires the layover.

I would note that as bad as the process was for the energy conference, the Chairman of that promise allowed all conferees and the public two weekend days to read the report, followed by a conference meeting that allowed amendments, albeit with no intention of actually seriously debating the merits of any changes.

While the House Rules provide for the minimum level of fair debate, they do not always provide for sufficient debate. I note that conference reports allow for one hour debate. On a bill of this magnitude, there should be at least 4 hours of debate.

I will not take this committee's time to discuss the merits of the conference report, as there appears to be little interest among those in control of the process in allowing a thoughtful debate of the report, given the fact that they do not care if Members are permitted to even read the report.

I can only say that the one thing both the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and I agree upon is that this bill will be "the end of Medicare as we know it." Our nation's 40 million Medicare recipients as well as all of those Americans who expect to be covered by Medicare some day deserve a true debate on that important issue.

The rush of my Republican colleagues to leave town as soon as possible rather than take the time guaranteed under the rules of the House to consider changes to the most important health program for our seniors speaks volumes about their priorities, and about their proposal.