Sam Gejdenson: “I just think that it is interesting where the priorities are, as the gentleman points out. I am sorry I offended the…”

“I just think that it is interesting where the priorities are, as the gentleman points out. I am sorry I offended the gentleman earlier today about the intensity of my statement. Frankly, when I find friends and relatives and constituents losing their health care, dying because of bad health care, it does bring out an emotional response. It is infuriating and frustrating. But then when you look where they are putting their efforts, instead of trying to deal with HMO reform, trying to make sure that seniors do not get bumped out of their managed care health care, they are trying to get oil companies extra breaks in the royalties they owe the taxpayers of this country. They came to this Congress saying they wanted to run it like a business. You tell me what business takes the family assets, the family owned oil reserves and says, let Exxon walk away with a little more of it. They spent time here, when they could not get any of the education product done, they got a $50 billion tax break for the tobacco companies, snuck it in a bill, lo and behold, when we found out even they were unable to keep it there so we repealed that tax break. They gave, again, a $50 billion tax break to tobacco companies. On health care, they spent more time trying to make sure that unmarried couples in San Francisco could not get health care provided by their community than they did in trying to protect the health care of the rest of us.”