Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I note in this morning's news that insurance companies that provide health insurance policies on the ObamaCare exchanges are projecting that insurance premiums will go up about 30 percent next year. Since 2013, we have seen the nationwide average of premiums go up 105 percent. That was before this latest announcement. We know that in 2017, the national average increase in premiums was 25 percent, and in Arizona, for example, it was 145 percent. So why did all of the Senate Democrats vote against making progress on a solution toward these runaway premiums I have talked about ad nauseam on the Senate floor? We have almost become numb to the pain people across this country are experiencing because of the skyrocketing rate of their insurance premiums, and we know that 28 million, roughly, have dropped out and are uninsured. In my State alone, because of the individual mandate, which is the penalty the government imposes for one's failing to buy a government-approved health insurance plan--as the Presiding Officer knows because I got the figures from him--more than 400,000 Texans who earn less than $25,000 a year paid the penalty because they could not afford to buy the insurance. All in all, about a million Texans paid the penalty because of the individual mandate. When we tried to do something about that last week, in working with our House colleagues, what was the response from the other side? It was crickets--silence.…”