Political Quotes

“Let me point out just one thing. We hear over and over again Republicans have no solutions for health care. HealthCaucus.org is a Web site that deals only with health care policy. On that Web site, Dr. Burgess's prescription for health care reform, the seven or nine things that I heard consistently in my town halls this summer are up there. People can download that and look at that themselves. Suffice it to say that we really have been frozen out of this process from the beginning. They were not interested in our input last year because they had a supermajority in the House of Representatives. You can't pass a bill with 40 extra votes? What's the matter with you? Well, now, the entire argument, the entire argument is within the Democratic Caucus. They don't have the votes on their side because it is a badly flawed product and a badly flawed process that they are trying to push through on the American people. People do need to understand this bill has nothing to do with health care any longer. This bill has, as has been pointed out tonight, if we wanted to fix these things, we would have fixed them. This bill is about higher political power for the party in charge, and they want to obligate the American citizenry to re-up their contract every 2 years in order to not lose the benefits that they are ostensibly going to get with the bill. The bill is a bad deal, Mr. Speaker. I would submit that the American people need to continue to weigh in on this. All is not lost.…”