Political Quotes

“last week the Committee on Energy and Commerce spent 3 long days and one very long night marking up a piece of legislation that is supposed to provide seniors with a Medicare prescription drug benefit. I say ``supposed to'' because most Americans support putting prescription drugs under Medicare. I have a graph here that shows those who support or oppose rolling back the tax cut that Congress passed last year and using that money to provide a prescription drug benefit under Medicare for seniors. Supporting is 64 percent, opposing is 25 percent, and 6 percent do not think Medicare ought to have prescription drugs. This poll was done between March 28 and May 1 of this year. So instead of having the huge tax cut that we passed last year before September 11 and extending them even after 9 years from now, the American people really want a prescription drug benefit for seniors before they want a tax cut. What is frustrating is that if we had been able to pass even one single Democratic amendment during that markup, I think all those days and that night would have been well spent. Unfortunately, every effort we made to improve the bill, and there was so much to improve, was shot down on basically party line votes. When I look at all the problems of the bill, I have to wonder why my friends on the other side of the aisle fought so hard to preserve it, because their bill creates such a complicated scheme of varying copays, high deductibles, and insufficient coverage.”