Political Quotes

“Mr. President, as we know, the Supreme Court ruled on the health care law, and we have had a lot of phone calls and e-mails. People want to know what this means above the politics. Sometimes I think that in Washington everything is analyzed over what this means for the elections and what this means to the Republicans or the Democrats. What I hope to do today by coming to the floor of the Senate is to respond to some of my constituents from Florida, and folks around the country who have called as well, to show what this means in real life and what my position is toward this moving forward. So that is what I hope to do here today in the few minutes I have while the Senate waits on the pending matter. Let's begin by understanding what has happened today. The Supreme Court doesn't decide whether something is a good idea or a bad idea; the Supreme Court's job is to decide whether something is constitutional. Today, by a vote of 5 to 4--four of the Justices disagreed, but five of the Justices, including the Chief Justice, decided that a key component of the health care law that passed the year before I was elected was constitutional. They said it was constitutional because it was under the taxing powers of the Congress. In essence, they said that this mandate, this requirement is constitutional because it is a tax. That is curious, of course, because the President denied that it was a tax. I looked it up.…”