Political Quotes

“Yesterday, July 31, the Senate voted not to waive the Budget Act to allow consideration of the Graham-Smith prescription drug compromise. This legislation was estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to cost $390 billion over the 10-year period, a cost which turned out to be within a few percentage points of the legislation offered by the Republicans. Although unscored by the Congressional Budget Office, the sponsors of the Republican legislation estimated that their cost was in the range of $370 billion. However, in spite of the fact that both the Democratic and the Republican plans were above $300 billion, which had been provided in the 2001 Budget Act, almost 18 months out of date, in spite of that fact, we could not get the 60 votes to waive the Budget Act and allow consideration of the substance of the proposal to provide a critical additional health care benefit for America's older citizens. Had we gotten to the proposal, what would the Graham-Smith compromise have provided? It would have provided full coverage to the 47 percent of America's seniors whose incomes were below 200 percent of poverty, approximately $17,700 for a single person. It would have provided a mechanism for significant discounts, in the range of 15 to 25 percent, as well as a Federal subsidy on top of those discounts for all Americans. For all Americans, it would have also provided insurance against catastrophic costs, costs beyond $3,300 of payments made by the beneficiary.”