Political Quotes

“Thank you. I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy for permitting me to speak just as I appreciate my colleagues coming to the floor to spotlight something that each and every American needs to be deeply concerned about. I listened, for example, for the last 4 years, as a member of the Budget Committee, to my dear friend and colleague Mr. Ryan talk about the skyrocketing problem of escalating entitlement under Medicare. Absolutely right. There are 79 million of the geezer baby boomers like me who are going to start collecting Medicare--10,000 a day starting this week and continuing for 19 years--and because of the development of more improvements in health care, not only are there more of us, but we are going to want more complex and expensive care. My Republican friends were talking about an entitlement crisis. The irony was--and we all heard it on the campaign trail--they talked about slashing Medicare, which they want to repeal starting next week. A great deal of irony. As the independent scorekeeper--the Congressional Budget Office--has pointed out and as you have repeated on the House floor, the legislation will, in fact, save several hundred billion dollars. More important than that, it puts in place reforms that will further reduce entitlement spending. I know my good friend from Vermont is well familiar with the Dartmouth Atlas in dealing with health care disparities around the country.…”