Political Quotes

“the Republican Senators met with President Obama earlier today and discussed many of the financial issues facing America and the difficulties we are having in achieving an agreement that puts us on a sound financial path. There surely are actions we can take together to improve our situation. I believe there was some progress made, and there are some avenues for progress that could be opened in the hours to come. I hope we can do that. But now it is well to recognize that our Medicare and Medicaid programs are surging in costs, and--as the President rightly noted to us at our meeting earlier today and has done so for a number of years-- that government health care costs are the biggest drivers of our debt. In other words, it is increasing at a faster rate than other programs, and we project it will continue to increase at those rates. I think that is true. It is true. We have a huge challenge there. But importantly to this whole discussion, I recall during a formal address to a joint session of Congress in September 2009, the President promoted his Affordable Care Act and stated that he would help fix this problem of growing costs of health care and then flatly and unequivocally promised, ``I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits either now or any time in the future, period.'' That is astoundingly inaccurate, and we have to know this. We are voting and wrestling on what to do about our health care bill and other spending programs.…”