Political Quotes

“Reclaiming my time, let me just run through a little bit. We heard right at the end of the 6-hour discussion down at Blair House today, the President and I believe the Speaker of the House said that the time for incrementalism has passed. I felt like I had stepped back in time. I heard that very same argument in 1993 and 1994 when the then-Clinton health care plan was before the House of Representatives. I never will forget the day that Mike Synar, a Representative from Oklahoma, a Member of this House of Representatives, was down in Dallas. He was talking to a group of us who were American Medical Association members, and he was going to talk to us about this bill. Many people had questions at the time--believe it or not, I was so shy I was scared to say anything--but toward the end, someone asked Mr. Synar, wouldn't it be better to tackle some of these problems on an individual basis and not try to do all of this all at once because it did appear to be frightening people. And Mr. Synar made a very emphatic statement that the time for incrementalism is over, we must have this bill and we must have it this year. Sounds familiar. That was over 15 years ago. Of course they didn't get the bill passed, life went on, the health care system in this country improved. We developed the State Children's Health Insurance Program under a Republican Congress with a Democratic President. We established medical savings accounts.…”