Political Quotes

“Madam President, I know that under the previous arrangement, the Senator from Massachusetts will be giving his farewell remarks. I would like to speak for the next 4 minutes prior to him coming to the floor. I spoke on the floor earlier explaining to my colleagues and providing some additional information about the fair resolution the Senate came to to help Louisiana and any other State that would have been similarly impacted through a very difficult Medicaid readjustment rate. I spoke at length this morning about that. I want to show this chart that clearly outlines our particular and unique and disastrous situation. Since 1999, and before, the State of Louisiana--and the occupant of the chair was a Governor, so she knows-- paid approximately 30 percent of our Medicaid dollars and the Federal Government picked up about 70. We are in the lower one-third of States on a per capita basis and have been since the Civil War, and we remain that way to this day. What happened after Katrina and Rita was, because of the great generosity not only of this body and the Congress and the former President and the current President and private sector dollars-- billions and billions of dollars poured into our State, driving our per capita income up an unprecedented 40 percent. That has never happened in the history of the Medicaid Program. The State that comes closest to a per capita increase, I believe--or several States increased by only 14 percent.…”