Political Quotes

“Before he leaves the floor, let me echo the praise for our friend from New Jersey, who has prosecuted the case against cigarettes for so many years. We are thankful to him. What a strong advocate he is. I thank the chairman as well for all his efforts. I wish to highlight a couple provisions he and I worked on together that speak to the headlines we are seeing in this morning's newspaper; in particular, the provision he and I partnered on that allows States to innovate and take their own fresh approaches in terms of addressing health care challenges. We all read today about how roughly a dozen States are already challenging the important, recently-signed health care law on the grounds that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. He and I worked very closely together to ensure that States could have a waiver to, in effect, go out and set up their own approach. In fact, counsel to the Senate Finance Committee specifically said, in response to our questions during the markup of health reform, that if a State could meet the general framework of our legislation, it did not have to do it with an individual mandate. I thank the chairman for stepping up and empowering the States. I want the country to know that under the legislation Chairman Baucus worked on with me, every State does not have to litigate. They can innovate. They can go out and look at fresh approaches to address our health care challenges. That would include doing health reform without an individual mandate.”