Political Quotes

“I would like to ask a question of the Senator from Rhode Island through the Chair. There has been a debate on the floor, and we have heard it off the floor, about whether we should pay for unemployment benefits. Historically, if I am not mistaken, most of the decisions to extend unemployment insurance benefits have been considered emergency measures and not paid for, and now there is a suggestion from many Republicans that we need to cut spending in areas to compensate for this extension of unemployment benefits which, if I am not mistaken, are in the range of $25 billion or $26 billion a year. One of the suggestions yesterday from Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell would, not surprisingly, address the Affordable Care Act, so- called ObamaCare, and would eliminate one of the basic protections in that law. What Senator McConnell proposed yesterday was to eliminate the responsibility of every individual to have health insurance, which was put in the law so we could have a large pool of insured people and say to anyone with a preexisting condition: You will not be disqualified for health insurance. So the Senator from Kentucky has given us this approach which the Republicans support: If you will agree to eliminate protection from health insurance for people with preexisting conditions, then we will allow you to give unemployment benefits.…”