Brian Bilbray: “I have to stand in support of the proposal, and I just want to point out to my colleague from California there is a…”

“I have to stand in support of the proposal, and I just want to point out to my colleague from California there is a 100,000 Californian seniors that want that choice. I have a stack, I have stacks of comments coming from my seniors in my district saying how it is nice to be able to have options that Washington is not mandating on seniors, that seniors are allowed to be treated as dignified individuals. This program was something that has worked, is continuing to work, in our State, and to restrict it not only from the rest of the country, but to allow it to die, is not a vote in support of seniors and their dignity, but actually a support to replace the dignity of seniors' choices with big centralized Federal control systems, and I think the problem is some of our colleagues are so wedded to command and control, big, centralized government that they are willing to sacrifice our seniors' ability to have the dignity of having their choice to choose something that serves them, and I think that we need to start treating our seniors with the dignity they earned over the years.”