Political Quotes

“I am coming to the floor again to focus on the fact that the clock is ticking for families in Michigan and across the country--men and women, children, older people, younger people who use the community health centers, as well as those who have their children covered under the Children's Health Insurance Program. The Federal funding for those programs stopped September 30--67 days ago. We have had votes. We have had bills. We have had nominations come before us. There have been divisiveness and controversy. It would be wonderful if we could stop for 1 day and do something that has bipartisan support. The fact is that CHIP covers 9 million children, and 100,000 of those are in Michigan. We passed a bill out of the Finance Committee in September. I want to laud our chairman, Senator Hatch, and our ranking member, Senator Wyden. It was a bipartisan bill. There was only one ``no'' vote. We reported it out. I assumed we would want to get this done before September 30, when the funding ran out. Instead, here we wait, 67 days later. There are 9 million children at risk because of this inaction--100,000 children in Michigan. The truth is that today, thanks to CHIP and thanks to a variety of healthcare efforts across the country, 97 percent of the children in our country have access to a doctor. In Michigan, it is actually higher; it is 97 percent of our children.…”