Eva M. Clayton: “I think yesterday we understood how democracy worked well for some and not well at all for others. If you have a lot of…”

“I think yesterday we understood how democracy worked well for some and not well at all for others. If you have a lot of money and you are very wealthy and influential, you get a hearing, but also you get a great deal, too. But if you are an ordinary citizen and you have faith in your government and come to express redress, they simply wanted to find out what was going on. They wanted to say to the committee how health care is so important. They wanted to know how that plan would enable them to provide for their health care, because many of them, as you know, are people who receive less than $25,000 a year, average $13,000, because they have to make choices, choices whether they will be able to have food or prescriptions. They simply wanted to have an opportunity to redress. This is a slippery slope we are going on. It is a dangerous prescription for democracy, if indeed we are going to reward those who are willing to support certain legislation with great deals; and, yet, those who want to express their opposition, we reward them by having them arrested. This is a democracy. We should be outraged at that.”