Political Quotes

“Thank you very much, Mr. Yarmuth. For the members of the Budget Committee, you've had a steep and difficult job as the Republicans have attempted simply to ram down the throats of this Congress a really unacceptable budget, one that does destroy opportunities. I would love to talk about Make It in America, and I will in a moment, but I was just listening to my colleague from California, and she raised the issue of the medical care here in the United States. It was 1964 that the United States set out on a very, very important mission, and that was to provide health care to seniors. Prior to that time, and I know from my own county where I grew up in Calaveras County, if you became a senior, you were destined for a very, very rough road. There was literally no insurance available for you, and there was no opportunity for you to get yourself out of poverty unless you happened to be among the wealthy. It was a terrible situation. So during the Lyndon Johnson period in 1964, they created a program called Medicare so that when you became 65, you had an opportunity to get a solid health care program available to you--a doctor program, a hospital program. You had to pay a little bit for the hospital program, but it was guaranteed available to you. And every American 65 and over had that policy. Here we are, 40-some years later, and what's taking place? Our Republican colleagues are determined to terminate, kill, stop, eliminate Medicare. They do it in a subtle way.…”