Peter Roskam

I think you have got a strong running start at it today with this hearing.

Now, Ms. Martinek, as we are listening and we hear about these First Amendment rights of yours, cumulatively, that have been trampled, there is something particularly egregious, I think, about the first of our first freedoms--that is, our…

But, look, history is filled with this story. And it always works out well when those who are entrusted with responsibility--that is us--listen to the complaints of the public, sort out fact from fiction, and then do our work.

You know, the question before us today is, who decides who gets to participate in the public square? Is it bureaucrats, or is it the American people?

I find it incredibly ironic, you know, on the one hand you are arguing today that the IRS is not corrupt, but the subtext of that is you are saying, look, we are just incompetent.

He was deeply grateful for the U.S. participation. And it is an incredible win for the U.S. as well.

It is an opportunity for us to share in technology; share in, essentially, the fruits of this product.

This is exactly the type of thing that I think the United States should be involved in.

I am here to congratulate and thank the committee for your past support for the U.S.-Israeli missile defense cooperation and to urge your consideration of that continued support.

It is incumbent upon us, if we are going to be dealing with the physician shortage that is looming, we have got to figure out a way to bring the joy of medicine back into medicine.

There is one statistic that I think it is important for us to be mindful of, and that is provided to us by the Association of American Medical Colleges. And they project that we are going to be facing a physician shortage in 2020--which is…

I come from a family with three siblings who are physicians. And what I have observed is that the joy of going in to medicine has been--largely been ground out, basically, by these larger systems.

I feel like Tevye here in Fiddler on the Roof. On the one hand and on the other hand.

The long-term discussion on Medicare is a discussion that continues to, I think, get everybody's attention.

We all wanted to prevent taxes from going up on middle-class workers.

It was a very compelling argument, a very successful argument.

Because this is a zero-sum game, right?

It is a selective admission process. And their argument is, look, this shows that the system isn't being abused and so forth.

So when these things are manipulated--and I know that is a characterization, but I will characterize it as a manipulation--when they are manipulated, they are manipulated for benefit of one at the demise of another hospital or the demise…

In a siloed payment system, there is no accountability.

That is unsustainable, and that, I think, is one of the factors that is driving part of our challenge today.

It is almost as if we have asked, you know, how much does your spouse weigh or something.

Popularity notwithstanding, there is a real challenge there in terms of the reality.

My comments were designed to illustrate the very difficult trade-offs. There is no party that has a monopoly on empathy or sympathy here with respect to pursuing tax reform.

So your testimony today is that the trustees, the people that are calling balls and strikes on this, are saying that in a period of 6 years, a third of the beneficiaries are going to be out of the system.