John Kerry: “I applaud my colleague from Massachusetts for his tremendous leadership on this subject and for having just pointed out…”

“I applaud my colleague from Massachusetts for his tremendous leadership on this subject and for having just pointed out the realities of the situation we find ourselves in on the floor of the Senate. It is hard for anybody, rationally, to think about the problems our seniors face in this country and then measure those problems against what the Republican majority is presenting the country in its budget resolution. I do not understand the rationale. I do not understand how they can come to the floor prepared to guarantee the wealthiest Americans are going to get an extraordinary tax cut. That is absolutely cast in stone. That is going to happen. They saw to it in this budget resolution that there is a certainty as to the tax cut. But at the same time they saw to it that there is no certainty with respect to senior citizens having an opportunity that we take care of their needs for prescription drugs. Their budget pays lipservice to the critical issue of helping seniors afford medications that are prescribed by their doctors. If you measure this, the budget resolution provides a tax cut of over $150 billion over 5 years. Those tax cuts will require we pay $18 billion more in interest payments. So when you add the interest payments to the tax cuts themselves, you have virtually the amount of the entire non-Social Security surplus that is going to be taken off the table and given back. But what is extraordinary is their focus.”