Political Quotes

“I rise to lament the fact that we have made no progress in reducing the uninsured since 2001. This is an issue we all need to be working together on because it affects everyone we represent, every family, every business. In fact, nearly 4 million more people are uninsured today than the day this administration took office. We need to light a fire. We need to have a sense of urgency about getting this done for people. We can do much better than we are doing. We live in the United States of America. We are the greatest, the richest country on the face of the Earth. When we have the will, we can make great things happen. That is what we need to do here. We enacted Social Security in 1935. This program now serves as our universal retirement, life insurance, and disability insurance system for millions of people. A generation later we passed Medicare, our Nation's universal health plan for seniors and the disabled. Even though I am very concerned about the recent law that we passed and whether it is a step backward--and I believe it is--the fact is, we put in place in 1965 a policy based on a set of values that said, if you are 65 or older, if you are disabled, you are going to receive health care. Interestingly, at that time, if we go back and read the record, this was viewed as a compromise, a first step. Originally in 1960, what was being debated was health care for everyone.”