Political Quotes

“Reclaiming my time, I will bring this back to that, that time they had 51 votes counted in the Senate on the health care bill. I went back to the Midwest, and I usually fly into Omaha. Well, Omaha, of course, is a central metropolitan area for the State of Nebraska. And as I went in, I did a whole number of meetings around on both sides of the river, the Nebraska and the Iowa side, did a lot of media around there and took phone calls on a call-in radio show. And this was the day before the agreement was made for the Cornhusker kickback. And the senator from Nebraska was the linchpin that could put together, hold together the entire health care package up or down. If the senator from Nebraska decides to pull the pin, the whole thing falls apart. So the day before, people were calling in and they understood that the Nebraska senator held the future of this socialized medicine bill in his hand. They didn't know what was going to happen. In the middle of the night, there was some kind of agreement that got made. There were accommodations that were made. All of a sudden there was an announcement that Harry Reid had 60 votes and he could break the filibuster in the Senate and they could pass the socialized medicine bill. And what does it include? First of all, it includes a provision that will allow for Federal funding of abortion, and it exempted Nebraska from the increased costs in Medicaid in perpetuity.”