Political Quotes

“I enjoyed hearing my friend, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), and his comments about Medicare. I know that my Republican friends care about health care. But unfortunately, they care more about the drug companies and the insurance companies than they do in providing low-cost prescription drugs and health insurance to the 50 million Americans who do not have health insurance. I did not come forward today to talk about Medicare, particularly, except to note that when Congress passed the Medicare bill last year, a bill that a couple of years ago was not received by the public very well in part because they did not tell us the truth about the cost of the bill, it ended up costing almost $1 trillion when they told Congress it would only cost $400 billion. But more than that, this bill provided literally 180 additional billion dollars to the drug industry profits and had direct subsidies of about $60 billion to the insurance industry. So I wish, while my Republican friends, I do believe they care about the poor, they care about working people, they care about health insurance, unfortunately their caring so much more about the drug industry, the insurance industry, it sort of gets in the way of too often doing the right thing. I come forward this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, to talk a little bit about the Central American Free Trade Agreement which, frankly, will likely be defeated in this Congress bipartisanly. This is not a partisan issue.…”