Political Quotes

“I rise to speak for a few minutes on the AHCA, which is the healthcare bill that was recently passed in the House. I believe the letters stand for ``anti-healthcare bill'' as there are many troublesome aspects of this bill--kicking something like 20 million people off of health insurance and compromising essential benefits. It is what I call a ``fig leaf'' preexisting condition provision, which does not provide adequate funding in order to actually protect people with preexisting conditions. Yet what I really want to focus on today are two interrelated provisions--a massive cut to Medicaid and a massive tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. By the way, that tax cut gives a zero tax cut to anyone making less than $200,000 a year. I will talk about that in a moment. Let's talk about the Medicaid cuts, however. This is a part of the bill that has not gotten much attention. It is $840 billion over 10 years. It will be about a 10-percent cut of Medicaid funds in Maine. It is hard to get an actual analysis of that, however, because the House bill was passed without any Congressional Budget Office analysis--none, zero. Unbelievably, the Members of the House voted for a bill that they, literally, did not know the financial effects of--how it would affect the States, how it would affect the people in their States. Maybe, next week, we will get that analysis. Certainly, this body will not act in that way with no Congressional Budget Office analysis.…”