Political Quotes

“Mr. President and colleagues, very shortly, the Senate will have the opportunity to confirm Attorney General Becerra to be the next Health and Human Services Secretary, and what this means is, after 4 years of going in reverse on health policy, it will be possible to drive and actually make progress for the American people in addressing their healthcare needs--progress in terms of lowering the cost of healthcare. We spent $3.8 trillion last year. So we have to lower costs, and we have to do it in a way that enhances quality, and Attorney General Becerra is going to be laser-focused on the key priorities for the days ahead. We all know that at the heart of that agenda is making it possible to end this pandemic. Now, central to his agenda is going to be the distribution of vaccines because there are a lot of pieces to the challenge of beating the pandemic, but right at the heart of it is distribution of those vaccines and PPE and bringing together all the people at Health and Human Services and in our country to have a coordinated strategy for dealing with the pandemic. We didn't have that in the past. I remember--and I am sure the Presiding Officer remembers--at one point, we didn't have any idea who was in charge. One day it was going to be the States. The next day it was going to be Jared Kushner. There was just bedlam for weeks and weeks with respect to who would even coordinate this country's strategy against the pandemic.…”