Political Quotes

“I want to start by thanking Chairman Wyden for his leadership on a range of issues that are important to vulnerable Americans, Medicaid being in the lead of that. Over and over again, Chairman Wyden has led us to ensure that we don't provide the kind of cuts that have been proposed in this debate about the next steps on ensuring that America doesn't default. And there is no question that not just people on both sides of the aisle but the American people want us to ensure that we do not default. The consequences of default--I won't itemize them. I think Americans are well familiar with them, but the consequences of default in a word would be ``catastrophic'' for every family, for every community in the country, and the consequences are too numerous to cite for tonight's purposes. But here is the problem: Even as most Americans want to take default off the table--most Members of Congress do--there are still some Members of the House, House Republicans, who want to keep default on the table or, in order to agree with the consensus, their pathway to avoiding default is to cut and cut and cut and decimate programs that are important to vulnerable Americans. They would cut tens of billions, for example, from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the TANF Program, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program, and the Children's Health Insurance Program. There are tens of billions just in those programs alone.…”