On the recordMarch 14, 2014
To quote a very famous President: There they go again. This is an alternative universe, through the Speaker, that you are trying to create. For years, we have been talking about how to reform SGR and how to pay for our Medicare providers. I, along with my Democratic colleagues--and some Republicans--supported past efforts to repeal and replace SGR once and for all, but we have never been able to get it done. That changed late last year. The Energy and Commerce Committee passed unanimously a bill to repeal and replace SGR. Building on that proposal, Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee and in the Ways and Means Committee here, which I sit on, came together and passed the bill that repeals SGR and replaces it with a payment system that rewards providers for delivering quality care to our seniors. What you have done, through the Speaker, is to take months of thoughtful bipartisan policymaking and thrown it away in order to score some really poor and cheap political points. All you are trying to do is undermine affordable care. What are you going to do with the 13 million people who can't get affordable care if we delay the personal mandate? You have never come up with an answer. You have never had an answer to what are you going to do about health care. All you can do is criticize and criticize. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
