Pete Domenici: “Let me make an observation and I will yield. When one is involved in an issue such as this for 15 years, as I have, you…”

“Let me make an observation and I will yield. When one is involved in an issue such as this for 15 years, as I have, you go to a lot of meetings. You go to a lot of meetings with mothers and fathers, with groups of those who are mentally ill. We hear the saddest stories one could ever imagine. I remember a gentleman and his wife came up to me and said: We have two children. I asked: Where are they? She looked up at him as if, Should we tell him? He was a CPA, very proud. She said: Tell him. He said: Senator, we don't know where our two children are. Well, we think they are in the slums of some city or in the jails of some city. I said: What are you talking about? He said: Well, they are both sick with schizophrenia and we don't have any more money to pay for them. We are broke. I said: Do you have insurance? He said: Oh, we have a lot of insurance, but the insurance doesn't cover our kids' illnesses. So we spent everything we had and then they got arrested because they did not act right. They don't act right. They do everything strange. They steal; if they see these little carts, they steal hotdogs. Maybe somebody arrested them for that and put them in jail. When people start telling these stories, it is not an accident, they did not tell of a one-time event. You know there has to be a lot more, right?”