Political Quotes

“Mr. President, you know, late this afternoon, around 5 o'clock, a number of Republican Senators indicated their unwillingness to support the so-called skinny bill, which would rip healthcare from 16 million people, according to CBO, and increase health insurance premiums by 20 percent--and not 20 percent over several years, 20 percent per year for the next several years, doubling health insurance premiums over the next 4 or 5 years. That is the bill we are talking about. They said that they don't like this bill, but they are willing to vote for it if they are provided assurances that this is just sort of a procedural vote. We just had a motion to proceed that was procedural in nature, according to them. We think it is the vote on healthcare. Now, this second vote, which is actually a vote to enact legislation--they are saying they are going to vote for it but only on the condition that we go to conference committee. Something just happened over the last couple of hours that is actually pretty astonishing. The House Rules Committee adopted what they call martial law. Now, it is not quite as bad as it sounds, but it is pretty bad. What that means is it gives total control over the procedures to the House majority. The House majority now is in a position to enact the skinny bill right away. There are a lot of Members of the Senate who want to talk about this, but I will just give you my little indicators that they are going to enact this into law by Sunday.…”