John Kerry: “I believe the eloquent questions asked by the Senator from South Dakota make their own answers. I think any American…”

“I believe the eloquent questions asked by the Senator from South Dakota make their own answers. I think any American dispassionately making a judgment about this process and looking at this legislation and measuring its impact would come to the conclusion that the fundamental sense of fairness, that the distinguished leader is talking about, is absent. I am sure the distinguished majority leader, who is standing here, will have his response, and I understand that. He is going to suggest, wait a minute, fairness is fairness. But here is a letter from the President of the United States. The President of the United States says if we do this, he is going to veto this. He has proven previously he is prepared to veto bills when he says he will. It seems to me that if we are not looking for a political issue, if we really want to legislate, we would sit down with the President of the United States and say, OK, Mr. President, we are prepared to offer this; let's have an agreement. But the President says that even his offer--I want to reemphasize this--even his offer was refused. The President says on long-term care: I offered to embrace your proposed deduction for long-term care in exchange for inclusion of my proposal to give families who are burdened today by long-term care needs a $3,000 tax credit.”