Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman for yielding to me. I just heard a term used here, ``legislative malpractice.'' It's an interesting term because I believe it applies so succinctly to the process that gave us the Affordable Care Act. Many people now don't even remember December 21, 2009. It is but a distant and dim memory; but on that very night, on the longest and the darkest evening of the year, the Senate held a cloture vote to allow the Affordable Care Act to proceed to a vote in the full Senate. It passed the 60-vote margin. On Christmas Eve, the Affordable Care Act passed by that same 60-vote margin, right ahead of a big snowstorm because all of the Senators wanted to get out of town. Let's think about this for a minute. Were there hearings on H.R. 3590 in the House of Representatives? No, there were not. There were health care hearings, to be sure. Those led to a big, explosive growth in attendance at our town halls in the summer of 2009, but there was never a hearing on H.R. 3590, save the hearing in the Rules Committee the night before it came to the floor of the House in March of 2010. The hearings on H.R. 3200 were vastly different from the law as written in H.R. 3590. And here's the real crux, Mr. Speaker. Here's what's really wrong and why Washington is in such a lather right now: The Affordable Care Act was never intended to become law. It was a vehicle to get the Senators home on Christmas Eve before the snowstorm. It was never intended to be law.…”