Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I stand before you today as a self-made businessman with 30 years of experience. I have been fortunate to create thousands of jobs, meet payrolls, and balance budgets. As the past chairman of the Florida Chamber, which represents 137,000 businesses across Florida, the number one issue 7 years ago when I was chairman and the number one issue today is affordable health care for small businesses. They are the job creators. They create 70 percent of the jobs. The Business Roundtable says today that the average employee for their family of four is $10,000. This bill does nothing to bring down the costs. In fact, in the next 10 years it's going to go from $10,000 to $30,000. I was with a pharmacist the other day, a private pharmacist. He employs about 20 to 30 people. We talked about various things. I didn't go there to talk to him about health care; but he brought out his health care bill, just got it, it went up another 22 percent. It went up 20 percent the year before. I don't know who my friends on the other side are talking to, but most small businesses in Florida that I know, they are very, very concerned about health care and the escalation of the costs going forward. It's a job killer. With a national unemployment rate at 9.5 and even higher in our State of Florida, this law is going in the wrong direction. We need to be working with small businesses on solutions to help them grow, succeed and provide health care at affordable cost.…”