Political Quotes

“Madam President, my colleagues and I have spent much of last year debating the issue of health care reform. After nearly a century of false starts and broken promises, Democrats came to Congress determined to enact comprehensive reform. We were confident that this time we would not fall short as our predecessors had done; this time we would deliver the changes the American people have been demanding for so many years. But over the course of the debate an unfortunate pattern emerged, a pattern of obstructionism and delay and scare tactics designed to derail our efforts to make a difference. My Democratic colleagues and I worked hard under President Obama's leadership to craft sweeping legislation, but our Republican friends were not interested in passing health care reform. They had no desire to take action and no plan of their own. Instead, they found every opportunity to stall, to clog up the Senate, and score political points by attacking those who supported our efforts. They spread misinformation about death panels and higher costs and rationing coverage even though they knew these things were not in our bill. But they kept repeating this bad information and repeating it until it finally started to take hold. The ordinary folk who heard these distortions had no reason to believe their elected officials would try to misinform them, so they retained this bad information and they did exactly what our Republican friends wanted them to do--they got angry. They held rallies.…”