Political Quotes

“Well, I appreciate my friend for yielding. I know my friend is well known in this body for his work on Medicaid and the effort to save that important health care program as well, and I thank him for that. Medicare is a great example. It is a great example. There is not a Member in this institution, Mr. Speaker, who believes that we have the money or could even find the money to pay for Medicare as it is structured today. It is not a question of, is it going to go bankrupt; it is a question of when is it going to go bankrupt. And that is not a Budget Committee member from the State of Georgia talking. Those are the Medicare trustees talking. The folks who are in charge of looking after the program year after year after year tell us that it is going to go under. What people in my district ask for, I will say to my friend from Indiana, is not a leg up, not something for nothing, not a free lunch. They just want to know what the rules are. And if you tell them what the rules are, they will rise to the occasion. I am in my forties. I know Medicare is not going to be there for me the way it is for my parents. I worry it won't be there at all for folks in my age bracket. What the Budget Committee has done in this budget is absolutely to protect Medicare. It has gone from something that might not be there for me--and certainly wouldn't be there for me in the way that my parents have known it--to a commitment that I can count on.…”