Political Quotes

“I want to say a kind word about our Presiding Officer. He heard me say this before. I will say it again. He may recall having cosponsored legislation in 1993, offered by John Chafee and cosponsored by Orrin Hatch and others, that actually had a lot of good ideas in it. It had the idea of establishing exchanges in all 50 States. Having the sliding scale tax credit brought down the cost of healthcare insurance to lower income people in the exchanges with a bigger tax credit. It had the individual mandate in there to make sure young, healthy people got coverage too. We didn't leave health insurance coverages to a pool of unhealthy young people to try to insure. We added employer mandates so a certain number of employers had to participate. There was prohibition against insurance companies denying coverage. I want to say, our Republican friends took that idea--and Mitt Romney used that idea to establish RomneyCare when he was Governor of Massachusetts. It worked there. It wasn't perfect. It took a while, but it worked. I would just say, we shouldn't give up on that idea. We should not give up on that idea. There are ways we can fix it. Senator Cardin talked about some of those ways, and I am sure Senator Wyden as well. I just heard John Kasich on one of the shows on TV. He said he was with Governor Hickenlooper. We have to stop being Democrats on this or Republicans on this. Folks want us to be Americans on this and work together. That is what I would like to do.…”