Mark Dayton: “During my campaign for the Senate in 2000, I promised a good prescription drug coverage program for senior citizens…”

“During my campaign for the Senate in 2000, I promised a good prescription drug coverage program for senior citizens would be one of my very first priorities. In December of 2000, after my election but just before I took office, I went up to Duluth, MN, up in the northeastern part of our State, and met with a group of senior citizens. At the end of the meeting, an elderly woman, who was about half my size and twice my age, stood up and said: Mr. Dayton, if you do not keep your promises, I am going to take you out behind the woodshed for an old-fashioned thrashing. It has been then with some trepidation that I have visited Duluth in the months that followed, and it is not just Duluth. Everywhere in Minnesota our elderly citizens, and actually all of our other Medicare beneficiaries who stand to benefit from this legislation, have been waiting. They have been waiting patiently and they have been waiting impatiently for the Senate, the House, and the White House to reach an agreement on a bill, pass it, and then have the President sign it into law.”