Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman, my ranking member, for yielding. Mr. Speaker, this is an important bill that is going to be before us today. Ordinarily, I would not support something this large being done on a suspension calendar, but this truly is an emergency for our Nation's patients and for our Nation's physicians. I support the passage of this bill. It does also give us some time in this body and in the other body to work on a permanent solution. There is plenty of blame to go around on both sides of the aisle and in both Houses of this Capitol as to why we are in this fix. The fact is that it began back in 1998 with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. It was extended under the Republican watch for 12 years. Now we have had 4 years under the Democrats, and it has not been fixed. In fact, most of the doctors you talk to have just come through the worst year ever in trying to manage their practices. Stop and think about it for a minute. You've got a small medical practice of two, three, four, five doctors. They don't do all Medicare work--maybe it's only 5 or 10 percent of their actual book of business. But in April and in June, we asked the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to hold the checks for a few weeks until Congress could get back from a recess and take up yet another fix for this problem.…”