Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I come before this House tonight to talk about a very important issue--it's been important for years, and it's going to be increasingly important and increasingly a part of the debate--and that is health care, and particularly health care for our seniors. We've got lots going on. ObamaCare, of course, was passed in 2010, and we're running into all sorts of problems. Of course, I and my Republican colleagues here tonight voted against it. I'm joined tonight, by the way, by two of my colleagues, Dr. Phil Roe, an obstetrician from the great State of Tennessee, and Dr. Scott DesJarlais, who is, like me, a family physician. I thought I would just give a brief introduction about Medicare and how that fits into the budget. I know that Dr. Roe is going to talk in more detail about that. No speaker would be complete without a chart, and I have several tonight. This is one I think that's important for everybody to understand. This pie chart breaks up spending for the Federal budget. If you will notice, the vast majority of this pie is in what we call permanent mandatory or so-called entitlement spending and interest. What makes up a large part of mandatory spending is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The size of this pie, this section of the pie, is growing. In fact, if you recall, back in the nineties we actually balanced the budget. The last time we balanced it, I think was in the late nineties.…”