Political Quotes

“I asked to speak this evening on SCHIP, the bill that was passed today. Unfortunately, I was unable to be there during the day here on the House floor during the debate, but I wanted to speak about the importance of it to me personally and why I think it is important to this Nation. Two years ago this month, or just around this month, having served 31 years in our military, my 4-year-old daughter, my only daughter, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and given 3 to 9 months to live. We began a series of brain operations and then chemotherapy. Down the street in Children's Hospital, we began that treatment, and about January when we were done and began to think about what to do with the rest of my life, having then retired from the military to live with my daughter on an oncology ward, it became very important to me to remember what I saw when we began that chemotherapy treatment. We were in a small room like anybody else who has been in a hospital. We had a roommate. It was a young 2 rac{1}{2}-year-old boy here from Washington, D.C., who had entered the hospital that day because he had been diagnosed with acute leukemia.”