Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I do support the Foxx amendment. I've listened to all the discussion on the floor, much of it dealing, most recently, with not the Foxx amendment, but actually with Medicare, which always catches my attention. You see, Mr. Chairman, I actually have, before I came into this position in Congress just a little over 2 years ago, 3 years ago now, I actually worked in the health care field. I worked specifically serving individuals that utilize Medicare. I was a therapist, a licensed nursing home administrator and manager of rehabilitative services. At the time of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, I actually was recruited by the Medicare agency--it was the Health Care Financing Administration then. Now it is the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services--to serve on the technical expert panel. So that's why, when I hear this rhetoric on the other side that the Republicans are trying to end Medicare, I find that just not accurate. And that's based on 30 years of experience of working with Medicare and developing an expertise with the Medicare policy, to be invited to be a part of the technical expert panel on Medicare. The fact is, when I came to Washington in January 2009, I thought all 435 Members of Congress understood that the looming crisis in Washington was Medicare, Medicare was one of them, and that Medicare, frankly, was going to go bankrupt. It was going to become insolvent, and if we didn't reform Medicare, it would go away.…”