Political Quotes

“First of all, these motions to instruct are kind of gimmicky, to be truthful. They are just designed for somebody to come to the House floor, lay out difficult positions that are hard to win in a debate and, basically, they do not have the force of law. Now, let me just speak to the three of them. First of all, the first one is we should not raise the age of eligibility for Medicare recipients from 65 to 67. In the House bill we did not do that. We said it ought to be 65. But let me make it clear to everybody who is in this Chamber, that if they think that when their children must be put into the workplace to work day and night to pay for our benefits, and they think that there is not a fundamental restructuring of the system in need, then are we doing injustice to the young people of this country. The fact is, in Medicare and Social Security and in Medicaid, we are going to find ourselves in a position where the number of young people will be few in number and the number of people getting benefits, which will be us, are going to be great in number. Mr. Speaker, our young children in this country deserve a chance, the same kind of chance our parents gave to us, and we know that there must be fundamental structural changes in the major entitlement programs because these programs are not sustainable.”