Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to talk about long- term care and a number of related challenges that confront our country, especially at this time. One of the most horrific numbers in all of the horror that we have seen in the aftermath of the onset of the virus and COVID-19 disease and the jobs and economic crisis that have followed it is the number of deaths in long-term care settings. When you combine the deaths of residents in nursing homes and other similar settings--sometimes called long-term care or even congregate settings--with the deaths of workers, we know that the number now exceeds 59,000 Americans. About 40 percent of all the deaths are either a resident of a long-term care facility or a worker in those facilities. So we are talking about those Americans today--those families--when we consider what we do next because no one here, I don't think--I don't care what side of the aisle, what point of view, who you are, what State you are from, no one in this body or in the House would want to accept the idea that, say, 4 months from today, or 5 months or 6 months, another 59,000 or 60,000 people will have died in those settings. We know a lot about how to get those numbers down. It is not one of those things where we can throw up our hands and say there is little that we can do. There is a lot we can do because Americans are smart, innovative, and caring, and a lot of smart people have figured out how to get those numbers down.…”