Political Quotes

“I will be glad to discuss that. I have enjoyed the opportunity to create legislation that would allow States to opt out of Medicaid's expansion under this bill. About 30 percent of the people in South Carolina will be eligible for Medicaid by 2014 when this law is fully implemented. It is the second largest expense in South Carolina. With the matching requirement, we get three Federal dollars for every State dollar you put on the table dealing with Medicaid. That sounds like a good deal until Medicaid explodes in costs and becomes the No. 1 driver of the budget in South Carolina, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Arizona. Under this bill, the problem we have today with Medicaid becomes Medicaid on steroids. I am confident that there are plenty of Democrats who have Governors who are Democrats who will say: Wait a minute, before you expand Medicaid and put additional burden on my State's budget, see if we can find more creative ways of dealing with it and give people the ability to opt out of that. That would be good policy. I want to comment about this. One rule of thumb is that any bill passed on Christmas Eve on a party-line vote is probably no good to the country. And that is what happened. As Senator McCain would say, this was a party-line vote, 60 to 40, on something dealing with one-sixth of the economy. This was supposed to happen on C SPAN. President Obama said: I am coming and we are going to change the way Washington works.…”