mr. chairman , i thank my colleague from south carolina , our ranking member on the committee on the budget for yielding me time .  mr. chairman , i wish i had enough time to respond to the majority leader 's problems with this budget , but , in all honesty , the war on terror , we just passed the supplemental that was not part of this budget , and most of us , in fact i voted for that supplemental because it was the war on terror .  but i rise to oppose the drastic cuts in medicaid in this budget resolution .  medicaid is not the problem child of our health care system and should not take the fall for this administration 's inability to balance the budget .  medicaid 's cost per capita growth is lower than medicare or even private insurance , despite the fact that medicaid has absorbed an increased beneficiary population due to gaps in medicare coverage , an economic downturn and the decline of employer-sponsored health insurance .  medicaid is a success story in this country , not a program that belongs on the federal chopping block .  as a member of the committee on energy and commerce , i can not support this budget resolution instruction to my committee to cut $ 20 billion outs of medicaid .  the robust medicaid program is critical for the health care delivery in my home state of texas .  forty-five percent of all infants born in texas are covered by medicaid , 45 percent .  nearly 50 percent of all children receiving care in our children 's hospitals are medicaid beneficiaries .  medicaid is the single-largest health insurer for our nation 's children .  how can we cut the most vulnerable in our society , our children , and still consider ourselves looking out for the least of this society ?  to paraphrase the bible , let us not suffer the little children .  that is not our job here in this congress .  if congress goes forward with these ill-advised medicaid cuts , the states will be left holding the bag and their only option is to further cut the benefits .  mr. chairman , 45 million americans currently are uninsured .  it makes no sense to slash medicaid spending , which will virtually guarantee an increase in the number of uninsured in our country .  medicaid cuts will not better our bottom line .  it will only make our problems worse .  