Joe Cunningham: “I truly believe that liberals want to help in Medicare, Medicaid, education, the environment, just like conservatives…”

“I truly believe that liberals want to help in Medicare, Medicaid, education, the environment, just like conservatives do. Let us take the case where you tell one of your liberal constituents that you are going to have him give his money to a broker. That broker is going to take care of Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. But then tell him he is only going to get 50 cents of every dollar he gets back and the other 50 cents is going to go pay for his staff and his overhead. That guy will tell you that he does not support that kind of an issue. That is what happens in this place. First place, it is not your dollar. You have to take it away from the constituent. Then you turn it around and give it back at a very low rate, for example, welfare. You only get about 30 cents on a dollar. Education, you get a very low percentage back on the dollar with 760 education programs. Mr. Speaker, what we are doing is we are giving the money back, but we are doing it without raising a single tax, and we are cutting 200 programs and streamlining government. Mr. Speaker, this is a monumental bill. It is $43 billion less than we would have had under Democratic control.”