Max Baucus: “this is very simple: $10 billion is $10 billion. This amendment takes $10 billion away from health care reform. We must…”

“this is very simple: $10 billion is $10 billion. This amendment takes $10 billion away from health care reform. We must pass health care reform this year, and we need the dollars we can get. Ten billion dollars is a lot. Right now, as we are trying to put this bill together, we are very close to making sure this budget is deficit neutral. In fact, we would like it to be better than deficit neutral. This $10 billion counts. We should not rob health care reform in order to pay for an extension of the doc fix that is not needed at this time. We will take care of the doc fix after we take care of health care reform.”