Political Quotes

“Mr. President, a couple of days ago I stated that I had worked in early February to put together a bipartisan package with my colleague, Finance Committee Chairman Baucus, to address some time- sensitive matters that needed to be considered. So I find it surprising we are taking up a package this week that, as was last week's exercise, is still a partisan product belonging to the Senate Democratic leadership. We are not taking up the bipartisan package I put together with Finance Committee Chairman Baucus. The Senate Democratic leadership arbitrarily 2 weeks ago decided to replace the Baucus-Grassley bipartisan bill with one that is dramatically different. That partisan package is almost three times the size and significantly greater in cost than the bipartisan bill Senator Baucus and I announced on February 11. It is unfortunate that the Democratic leadership failed to ensure that these critically needed Medicare provisions were extended at the end of last year, and then they failed to extend the provisions that had expired in 2009 for over 2 months. So, today, this present situation I just described brings me to the offering of this amendment. This amendment would ensure that Medicare provisions are fully offset, and my amendment would also extend the physicians update through the end of this year. The words ``physician update'' are directly related to the formula used to determine Medicare payments to physicians.…”