Given the importance of the health care debate, the American people should be presented with a balanced perspective, and that can only be achieved with a response on network television from a representative of the Republican Party.

The opposing party has typically been granted this opportunity not only in the case of the annual Presidential State of the Union Address to Congress, but at other times when the President has come before Congress as well. For example, in 1993 when President Bill Clinton spoke to Congress on health care, the networks carried a Republican response from then-Governor Carroll Campbell of South Carolina.