Political Quotes

“Thank you for yielding that time to me, Mr. Pallone. Madam Chair, I rise today in strong opposition to H.R. 1173. This bill is another Republican attempt to tear down and dismantle programs that provide health care in the United States. Now we have Medicare, and the Republican alternative to Medicare is to just shift more costs on to seniors, give them a voucher and let them pay more if they want more than that voucher will provide, and that voucher is not going to provide much over time. On Medicaid, they just want to shift the costs on to the States so the States can tell a lot of very poor people, I'm sorry, we don't have enough money to take care of you, but we're not required to under Federal law. They said that they didn't want the Affordable Care Act; they wanted to repeal it. But they haven't told us what they want to put in its place. They said that this was going to be repeal and replace. They have proposed a repeal, but we have no proposal to replace it. Republicans now want to take a part of the Affordable Care Act, the CLASS program, that is the one and only significant new initiative to put in place to deal with our country's long-term care crisis. Those who are supporting this bill say that the CLASS Act is not the right solution to our long-term care problem. Well, I don't think it's perfect, either. But the solution is to amend the program, to make it work, not just repeal it and leave nothing in its place.…”