Kendrick Meek: “You call Shakedown Street. The deal was, and I am not talking about the deal with cards, the deal was, and may still be…”

“You call Shakedown Street. The deal was, and I am not talking about the deal with cards, the deal was, and may still be, as far as we know, is that corporations and special interests had to hire, okay, quote-unquote, former staffers from the Republican side to work in their corporation. The leadership of those lobbying groups had to be a Republican person that was trusted by certain Members and certain former Members of the majority. So that was the deal. You do that, and then you have to make sure that we have a line of communications, because we are in this thing together. I can tell you it has resulted in a lack of health care policy. And now the President is talking about health savings plans, which is very interesting, because we already have something similar and it is not working, Mr. Ryan. Higher prescription drug costs, okay? Not allowing us to negotiate with drug companies. I must say, Mr. Ryan, I don't blame the industry. I don't blame the industry. I don't want to walk around here and say ``you bad industry.'' You made us, or you made the majority. No. The majority voted for it, and that is what happened. The bottom line is that it wasn't these special interest groups that voted to have Members of Congress. They didn't go to the polls. I didn't see a special interest group say, well, I am going to go to the poll and vote for this Congressman because they are going to serve me when they get to Washington. No, an individual American did that.…”