Political Quotes

“The Bingaman amendment deals with a subject we have dealt with in the Daschle-Dole compromise. The Daschle-Dole compromise provided $100 million for drug treatment over the next 2 years. It was a compromise between what Senator Cohen and Senator Bingaman had sought, which was $100 million per year. We came up with $100 million over the next 2 years. It was intended to be a compromise. As compromises are, we compromise, and hopefully when you compromise you do not go forward and offer the amendment that we compromised on. But, unfortunately, that has occurred in this case. It is going to cost $300 million more for this drug treatment. And I hope that, given the fact that this bill is far under the reconciliation target that we need to meet to balance the budget, this is another $300 million that we will have to take out of Medicaid or Medicare or somewhere else in the Finance Committee.”