i like to paraphrase churchill, and i did yesterday, and i will do it again. what we are doing here today is not the end. this is not the beginning of the end. at the end of this week, it will be the end of the beginning. it will be the end of the beginning, and for me, conceptual language is better, frankly, than legislative language, and for me, knowing the cbo preliminary estimates on the chairman's mark is modified, that is not bad, and for me, that is sufficient. last point. some people are tired of having me say it. i am not going to vote at the end of the day -- i am looking for a bill out of this committee. i am not going to vote for a bill in this committee that i believe fails to rein in the growth in health-care costs, and i am sure not want to vote for a bill after a couple of weeks of debate that does not been the cost curves, does not restrain the growth, and increases the budget deficit. i am not going to vote for that bill. the president says he is not going to sign a bill like that, and i am not going to vote for it, so we are on the same page

his nominating purpose was, to paraphrase lincoln, pace communism on the course to ultimate extension. most of reagan -- both at home and abroad, encompassing churchill's understandg of consistency and politics. consider reagan's agreement in 1982 to rate taxes by $98 billion over the next three years, a deal that cause a lot of conservatives to cry that they had been betrayed. the long analysis of this in my book, summarize briefly, i make a speculative argument, the only speculative argument in the group which i have convincing evidence of, going more on intuition, reagan knew early in the fall of 1981 that the overall tax cut package fee in 1981 had been too large fees and the deficit would be too large and he did have to give back on some of the tax cuts. he had an uncanny sense of timing and negotiations, his opening bid was $3 billion in increased taxes. the democrats wanted to cancel the rest of the income-tax cuts, canceled the rollback. that, above all, was what reagan wanted to preserve. remember too, if you know the story, the deal as laid out on paper, was for every dollar of tax increases, congress would come forward with $3 of spending cu