Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I came to speak on the Merkley- Levin amendment, which I think is so important. I will speak about that in a moment. I am a little surprised to hear another health care debate comment. Last year, through much of the year, there was opposition--a lot of opposition--to the health care bill. Most of the opposition came about because of the kinds of things that were said on the Senate floor that simply weren't true: that this bill would mean the government would put a bureaucrat between your doctor and yourself as a patient, that it was a government takeover, that it was socialism. In fact, the arguments they used last year against the health care bill were the same arguments they used against Medicare in 1965: socialism, government takeover, and bureaucrat between you and your doctor. Those things didn't pan out with Medicare. The same arguments were used, but they clearly weren't true in 1965, when conservatives, including the John Birch Society and others similar to that, did everything they could to defeat Medicare. They were not successful then and they weren't successful on the health care bill now.…”