Political Quotes

“Let me add to that and carry on a little piece of it. The Republican budget, which we will be voting on here on the floor of Congress in the next 2 days, has provisions that are equally harmful to seniors and to wannabe seniors, people who want to get to be 65 or 67 years of age, and these are the Medicaid reductions. In the proposal that the Republicans will bring to this floor, the Road to Ruin proposal, is a block grant to the States for Medicaid services. In California, we call it Medi-Cal. This is a program that provides benefits to the poor and those who cannot afford medical services because they are severely disabled, mentally disabled, or seniors that cannot afford services in nursing homes. The block grant is less than what is now available to nearly every State, and it is scheduled to be reduced in the years ahead, the purpose of which is presumably to deal with the deficit, but what it does is it takes that whole population of seniors, current seniors, and others who are currently served by the Medicaid program and puts them at risk. The effect will be to throw seniors out of nursing homes, seniors that are on Medicaid or Medi-Cal in California. It is the most onerous and hardhearted proposal I have yet seen. These are people that are in desperate need of services, services for the mentally ill, services for the severely disabled, services for seniors who are in nursing homes and who cannot afford the cost of nursing homes.…”