Political Quotes

“I hope this amendment will be agreed to. This is an amendment I think all of our colleagues can support. I am offering it on behalf of myself and the Senator from North Dakota, Senator Conrad. It will preserve the Medicaid coverage for some 30,000 children who, if we do nothing else, are going to lose it. These are the most severe disabled children in the country. This was a slip, more than anything else, I think, when we passed the welfare reform law last year. We learned these children might lose their Medicaid coverage as a consequence of losing their SSI. Since then there has been a broad agreement we should step in and try to preserve health care for the most needy of all children. In fact, the bipartisan budget agreement called for continued Medicaid coverage for these children. So, this amendment merely plugs that gap that we had all agreed on. It simply honors the agreement. Its cost is modest. It is about $100 million over 5 years. I can argue if we can find $16 billion to provide insurance for kids who lack it, surely we could set aside a fraction of that to provide insurance for children who stand to lose it. That is what we are faced with. If we do not do this, these 30,000 severely disabled children would be cut off.”