Political Quotes

“I want to thank the gentleman from Minnesota, Congressman Ellison, for his leadership in the Progressive Caucus and to thank him for yielding me some time to talk about this momentous decision by the Supreme Court. First of all, a little bit of context. I represent Cleveland, Ohio. There are many people in Cleveland who are uninsured. There are many people in Cleveland who could not afford health care. There are many people who are working who can't get their families covered. This issue of health care reform is one of the defining issues in our country, and it's one that we finally grappled with in 2010 to come up with a bill that not everyone agreed with. As a matter of fact, as Mr. Ellison will remember, I didn't agree with this. I was not satisfied with health care reform within the context of a for-profit system because I wanted a not-for-profit system. Yet, while we had a for- profit system, one of the things we needed to do was to make sure children with preexisting conditions would be covered; to make sure all of these lifetime caps on the amount of money that people could claim for expenses were removed; and to make sure that people were given a fighting chance with the insurance companies. {time} 1750 What's happened is the Affordable Care Act finally took a step in the direction of reform. It's an important step, and the Supreme Court has said you can do that under Congress' taxing authority, but it's just a step.…”