Political Quotes

“Mr. President, if I could make this point to my colleague: No judge is going to ask the average person what they think, nor should they. This is a legal question. I don't know how it is going to come out. I think it is probably 50-50. What we are doing differently, I say to my friend from Wyoming, is we are not saying we need to pass it all from Washington or repeal it all from Washington. We are saying: Allow people to comment on the product that was created on a party-line vote on Christmas Eve, in an unseemly fashion, by allowing people at the State level, through their elected representative, to have a say. That is different than a court challenge. That is different than a Washington debate. Quite frankly, if we are going to turn one-fifth of the economy upside down, I think it would be very helpful to this country to involve our fellow citizens. This will be a constitutional academic decision made on the law. What we are trying to do, I say to my good friend from Wyoming, is to take the debate on health care to the State level so people can speak up before we lock the country into a plan that I think is going to ruin the viability of the States' budgets by expanding Medicaid to 150 percent above poverty. Is that not the purpose, to give people the chance to speak as they have never had to this point?”