Political Quotes

“$529 billion, to be exact. The Senator from Wyoming has brought out over and over the unsustainable growth problem we have, meaning every year we come to this cliff with physicians--and he is a physician and used to practice on a daily basis--and instead of dealing with that issue over a decade, which would have cost about $300 billion, instead, we swept that issue under the rug and took the full $529 billion to help create this entitlement. I think most people in this body know there is no way this bill is going to work the way it is laid out; that the costs are going to be substantially more because in a free enterprise system, people act on their own behalf, in their own self-interest. The subsidies are so high for families up to $88,000 a year, the penalty is so low, what is going to happen is we are going to have millions and millions of people out on this program far beyond the projections that have been laid out. So anyway, because we are talking about Social Security and Medicare, all of us want it to be solvent. That is what we want to see. We want to make sure Medicare and Social Security are here for generations down the road. But we all know--the Medicare trustee has said so--it is going to be insolvent by the year 2024. One way to do deal with it is to put our heads in the sand and just let it happen in the years after we are gone, let it happen to the good citizens of this country.…”