Political Quotes

“I appreciate your leadership and your focusing on the issues that face us. Having spent hours in the Budget Committee so far this Congress, I must admit that I was shocked and surprised with the profoundly negative approach that is being taken by my good friend, Paul Ryan, the chair of the Budget Committee and my Republican friends. First of all, there is in essence a refusal to zero in on the three areas of greatest increase in the budget. We see repeated charts that talk about Medicare going through the roof over the next 50 years. And it is true. We need to get Medicare spending under control because the past path is not sustainable. But ironically what is ignored is that the approach that is being offered by the Republicans in their budget actually ignores the major provisions that have been placed in statute now that would actually reduce the rate of Medicare spending in the future. We have taken every significant, independently verified promising initiative to bend that cost curve, and they have been stripped away. We watched Republicans attack Democrats because there were provisions to be able to make a difference with Medicare spending, claiming it would somehow slash Medicare for senior citizens by a half-trillion dollars.…”