Ed Markey: “I thank the gentleman. The Republicans are allowing nostalgia for a time before Medicare and Medicaid were ever on the…”

“I thank the gentleman. The Republicans are allowing nostalgia for a time before Medicare and Medicaid were ever on the books to replace the idealism that we need to have in order to deal with the real challenges of the future. But for the poor, the sick, the elderly and the disabled, the past is just a memory and the future is their hard reality. And that's what this budget will be for those people, a hard reality. It takes no courage for the Republicans to stand here on the House floor and to call for an evisceration of the Medicare budget, of the Medicaid budget and all the other programs for the poor, the sick, the elderly and the disabled in our country that they opposed ever having been put on the books in the first place. If you kicked this budget in the heart, you'd break your toe. GOP used to stand for ``Grand Old Party.'' Now it stands for ``Get Old People.'' And that's what this budget is. It is a targeting of the poor, the sick and the elderly in our country. Do they ask sacrifice from the defense budget? Do they ask for the defense budget to go down? No, it just keeps going up year after year. Do they ask for sacrifice from the wealthy? No, they say tax breaks for the wealthy year after year after year. Who do they target? They target Grandma. They don't even have the ability--the courage--to stand up and say to the oil companies, who at $100 a barrel are making $100 billion in profits a year, ``We're going to take away your tax breaks.'' No.…”