Maggie Hassan: “You know, sometimes the wheels of our democracy don't turn as quickly as we would like. Sometimes progress is painfully…”

“You know, sometimes the wheels of our democracy don't turn as quickly as we would like. Sometimes progress is painfully slow. But it is a singularly bad day for this body, a bad day for this country, when, far from simply failing to move forward, this body chooses to take a great lurch backward, to decide to make the lives of the American people worse. By letting the Affordable Care Act tax cuts expire, by letting healthcare slip away from families all across our country, today, the majority in this body appears to be prepared to do precisely that. Now, just a comment or two about my colleague and friend Senator Cassidy's presentation about the Republican plan just now. Senator Cassidy and I are good friends, and we have worked on a lot of bipartisan healthcare legislation to date. But let's be clear. The Republican plan that he is talking about doesn't help people afford their premiums in the first place. That is what this is about. The other issue that my colleague raised about the Hyde amendment-- the Hyde amendment applies to the Affordable Care Act already. What the Republican plan does is now say that people who pay private premium dollars into the ACA cannot use their private dollars to fund what are called elective abortions. So I just want to be clear about those two points.”