Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman for yielding and for his outstanding leadership on this very important committee. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to implore my colleagues to put politics aside for the sake of the 232,000 children in my State of Georgia and the 8.9 million children across our Nation who are counting on us to reauthorize CHIP. Twelve States will run out of CHIP funding before the end of this year. So the idea of waiting around another 2 months before acting on CHIP is simply unacceptable. Let's be clear why we are here today. Instead of having this discussion 2 months ago, we had to delay the Energy and Commerce Committee markup of the CHAMPIONING HEALTHY KIDS Act, the CHIP bill, because the other side of the aisle refused to even consider reasonable offsets to pay for the program. I ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle: How was that objection related to fighting for the middle class? Even President Obama supported the change for high-income Medicare beneficiaries in his annual budget. How are we supposed to look parents in the eye back home and tell them that we choose politics instead of choosing to relieve their concerns about coverage? Mr. Speaker, let's do our job and let's reauthorize CHIP.”