Political Quotes

“Madam President, I was not planning this today, but as many of my colleagues do, I do a morning coffee where anybody from my State of Ohio--as Senator Durbin does in Illinois, Senator Udall in New Mexico, and others--and my colleague from Ohio does one too, Senator Portman--people can come in from around the State and talk about what they want. A couple came in today, a father and a mother and two children. One looked to be maybe 10 and the other looked to be maybe 15. They came and wanted to talk to me about their private school. They have sort of a home school association, it sounded like, from a conservative part of Ohio, Southwest Ohio. We talked about what we could do to help them in terms of educating their children. Then, right before we parted--and I was going to see other people at this coffee; we had maybe 75 people there--the mother of these two children said: By the way, thank you for the Affordable Care Act. I said: How is that? She pointed to her son. She said: My son--I think he was 15. She said: My son is diabetic. As I learned later, he was diagnosed at the age of 6 and has injected insulin into his arm and his leg for 8 or 9 years. She said: My son who is diabetic, we could not get insurance because of my son's preexisting condition, diabetes. We were turned down--I counted them. We were turned down 34 times for insurance. My family was turned down 34 times for insurance. Because of the Affordable Care Act we now have health insurance. She smiled.…”