Political Quotes

“When I was a young college student, age 20, thinner, dark hair, I worked for the House of Representatives, for the Member that represented the district in which I have lived my entire life. I was 20 years old. That was at the time that Medicare passed. It was 1965, I believe. And the original cost of Medicare for 17 million people was, I think, $2.5 billion. And the number of recipients has doubled today, but it now costs $140 billion a year for Medicare. And the estimates as to what Medicare would cost in 1993, the estimates that were made back in 1965, I think it was estimated to cost about $9 billion. And it costs in excess of $100 billion. So these projections are just way totally off. It is due to many things. People are living longer. The cost of medical technology has risen and things of that nature. And as I travel my district, I do not know about the district that you gentlemen represent, I start over on the river, Mississippi River and represent a county by the name of Jo Daviess County, which is heavy in tourism, number one in hay production in the state. Next county is Stephenson County where the Freeport doctrine was debated, the Lincoln- Douglas debates. That county has the highest milk production and a third of all the dairy cattle in the State of Illinois live in Stephenson County and they eat all the hay that comes from Jo Daviess County. Next to that county is Winnebago County that has over 1,000 factories, incredible, over 1,000 factories.”