Political Quotes

“I strongly support a drug benefit in Medicare. And in some aspects, the Democrats have won because it has not been that long ago, just a few short years, that the Republicans wanted to take a privatized outside-of-Medicare, a drug benefit. But now all of the debate is about it being a part of Medicare. So in that aspect, I think that we have won as Democrats. But I do believe that what they have done with this bill is continue to try to privatize Medicare and the benefits that are in it. An entire generation of baby boomers are upon us, Mr. Speaker, and in just a few years away we are going to have to deal with this. Unfortunately, this bill falls short of what our seniors deserve as it has holes in it that the Republicans refuse to plug. Perhaps the $174 billion bill that we passed just previous to this debate could have been used for the doughnut to be plugged. Efforts to fix this problem were denied us through the amendment process in this body on this debate. I offered amendments to try to bring some certainty with 2 years for our seniors to try to provide our rural ambulance services, our rural home health care and our rural doctors a fair reimbursement. In particular, I believe this bill falls short in addressing the needs of rural seniors and rural Americans. In fact, our previous experience should tell us that it has not worked. It is not profitable to offer plans to seniors in rural areas.”