Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Speaker, I understand my friend and colleague from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen) was on the floor talking about the disingenuous approach here and the discontinuity between what we are talking about today and what we did yesterday in the Budget Committee. It is an unusual approach to public policy. Where there is a claim that they are, under their budget, if they are able to enact it, going to completely eliminate the Affordable Care Act, but they are going to keep all of the taxes, and they are going to keep the adjustment to the Medicare Advantage Program that was such a focal point in their campaign attacks last year. It was bad when Democrats did it with the Affordable Care Act, but they are going to keep all of those changes. Last week, we had, by a legislative sleight of hand, a short-term fix for the sustainable growth rate. Now, that is the adjustment that is made on an ongoing basis on physician reimbursement under Medicare that has gotten wildly out of whack. It was something that I voted against when it was first enacted. It is an annual charade that goes on here, where we force people in the medical space to come to Washington, D.C., to plead against draconian cuts. We actually had been working in the Ways and Means Committee and the Commerce Committee on a bipartisan approach that would actually solve this problem permanently.…”