Political Quotes

“The previous bill was on Alzheimer's. And, in my district, I had one of those patients. A few years ago, he was beat six times with a belt buckle. One of his neighbors had dementia, and he was defrauded of $84,000 four months before he passed away. It's why I submitted the Elder Abuse Victims Act. This incidence of elder abuse, whether it's physical, financial, moral, degrading--and I mean sexual--or these types of exploitations are only growing in numbers. In my State of Pennsylvania, the third oldest in the Nation, between 2006 and 2007, and then 2007 and 2008, the incidences increased 39 percent. Yet, we are really not sure how many incidents there are. My colleague from Georgia cited numbers may be more than 5 rac{1}{2} ext{ million}. But we don't know. At least 84 percent of them are reported to be unreported. The issue is that we truly need to step back and have a look, a comprehensive review of all the States and the agencies that are intent upon addressing this issue to some degree and come up with one uniform type of definition and standard by which we could begin to build up the correct reporting requirements we need in order to properly address this issue. Then we need to step over and recognize that we do well, and need to do even better, for our women. We appropriate $540 million towards violence against women, and $6.9 billion for child abuse, but then recognize it's only a bit over $100 million for senior abuse.”