Political Quotes

“Yesterday President Bush delivered to this Congress his proposed Federal budget. In the coming months, Democrats and Republicans in Congress will debate budget proposals largely based on divergent cardinal moral values. We will debate budget cuts that represent more than just program additions or scale-backs. The President's proposed cuts to vital government programs are reflective of differences in moral core philosophies on the role of our government in serving our people. Budgets are moral documents that reveal fundamental priorities of a person, of a household, of a community, of a business, of a government. There is no better example of where Democratic and Republican values diverge than on Medicaid. The President claims he only wants to cut programs that are either not getting results or that duplicate current efforts or that do not fulfill essential priorities. As Democrats, we could not agree more on the need for efficient government. That was how we balanced the budget in the 1990s. But which of those three criteria does the President mean when he talks about Medicaid? There is no question Medicaid gets results. In spite of what my friends on the other side of the aisle like to demagogue, it operates at a lower cost than private health insurance. Private health insurance has in the last few years grown at 12.7 percent; Medicare has grown at 7.1 percent. Medicaid costs have grown at only 4.5 percent a year. There is no duplication in Medicaid.”