Sam Gejdenson: “Now the bad news here is that the extreme right has taken control of the agenda here. We find ourselves through this…”

“Now the bad news here is that the extreme right has taken control of the agenda here. We find ourselves through this session not dealing with the budgetary matters, health care, education. We spent half a day on the floor trying to take away health care from people in California. We go after ethnic groups and try to divide this country based on their national origin or their heritage. When it comes to education, we ignore it. Pension reform; we will not deal with it here. Chris Dodd and I sat in a meeting in Norwich, Connecticut, where a gentleman died of a heart attack because he was so frightened about the situation of his family because the HMO was in the process of dropping them. Can his family, can other families turn to this Congress? No. This Congress is too busy, too busy to take care of people's health needs. In my district and across this country there are a quarter of a million seniors who are losing their health care and million others that are frightened. We are here sitting around taking up pieces of legislation that have no life-and-death significance, but not HMO reform.”