Political Quotes

“many Americans see the process of setting a budget resolution as a murky, inside-the-beltway exercise that, charitably speaking, leaves them confused and frustrated. More than occasionally I have shared this frustration. But Americans also know that the decisions we make now are going to affect their futures and the futures of their children and their grandchildren. At home in Oregon, that means doing the hard work that the majority budget resolution simply ignores. At home in Oregon, it means making tough choices, not politically expedient ones. For example, it means fixing Medicare and Medicaid, not just sucking billions of dollars out of these extraordinarily important health care programs. At home in Oregon, we have ground down the cost of health care and Medicare to one of the lowest per capita averages in our Nation. Republican budget drafters could have built on Oregon's success. They could have helped transform the Medicare Program, its management and its finances, in a way to encourage innovation and equality and efficiency as we have done in much of my State. But this budget simply cuts rather than transforms. It leaves behind many of the same old problems in the Medicare Program, the problems that have seen so often results in rewards for inefficiency and instead again pounds the vulnerable. I think it is a mistake, and I think it is possible to do far better. On the welfare reform issue, all of us understand this is a job that must be done.…”