Michael Bennet: “I say through the Chair to my friend from Texas, I have not read the bill, but I will read the bill. I commit to him…”

“I say through the Chair to my friend from Texas, I have not read the bill, but I will read the bill. I commit to him that I will do that. I appreciate the implication of this, which is that the Senator is not objecting to my metaphor about the cable bill being cut up, because I do think that is a real problem. We are not saying to people--we should not be saying to people that we are going to behave in an irresponsible way. As somebody who used to spend his time restructuring companies that were really well run, really well operated but had horrible balance sheets, I would have to think hard about the treatment that creditors would provide to, in this case, the U.S. Government when I look at that. I will look at that. I say to the Senator from Texas that there are other things we might even be able to agree on too around here. For a long time I have thought it would be important for us to put health care on a budget in this country. We are not on a budget. During the health care debate I had an amendment called the fail-safe amendment that would say to the American people and to the Congress: This is what we have to spend on health care. That is all there is. There is not any more. We have to manage toward that. If we failed, if we tripped over it, we would actually have to make cuts, make changes to our system of health care.…”