Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I listened to my friend from South Dakota. I was thinking about how long we have been debating health care reform. If we were to repeal the bill we enacted last year, how long would it be before we would be able to get back to serious health care changes? It took us 1 year to debate and pass the bill that was ultimately signed by the President, but it took us 30 years to get to this subject and several administrations, both Democratic and Republican, that offered proposals where we could bring down the cost of health care and make it more available to the people of this country. We brag, and rightly so, that we have the highest quality, most technologically advanced health care in the world in the United States. I look at my own State of Maryland, and I know people come from all over the world to get their health care needs met and get their doctors trained, whether it is at Johns Hopkins University or the University of Maryland Medical Center or what is happening at NIH. I know the Presiding Officer can tell us about the great institutions in the State of Pennsylvania, and that is true. The problem is, it is out of the reach for too many Americans. It is too expensive. We don't have access to care in too many communities in America. The Congress last year did something about that. We took major steps forward to help the people of our Nation.…”