Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. Mr. Speaker, over 3 months ago, the funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, expired. Today, families throughout the country, including 90,000 children in my home State of Colorado, face great uncertainty about the future of their healthcare. When CHIP was first passed, over 20 years ago, it was done in a bipartisan manner, and, until recently, CHIP has always been a bipartisan, nondivisive issue. It is unfortunate to see that, today, here, we are in this body under Republican leadership and, somehow, even children's health insurance has become a political football while we while away our time, our precious legislative time, on bills that have passed this body before and don't go anywhere. In our most recent Band-Aid for government funding, House Republicans made a claim that CHIP was extended until March 31, but that wasn't the case. By some reports, States could run out of funding in the next few weeks. In fact, in Colorado, our own budget experts predict the State will run out of children's health insurance money by the end of February. Cancellation letters are literally scheduled to go out at the end of this month. Mr. Speaker, this simply isn't a way to govern, crisis to crisis, ignoring the real issues people care about in order to consider special interest legislation.…”