Political Quotes

“Senator Thune deserves a lot of credit for pursuing this issue tenaciously and seeing his prediction validated now by President Obama's own Secretary that this cannot be a viable program. But he is exactly correct. One of the greatest financial misrepresentations in history, if it continues to be on the books, will be the contention that this health care bill would actually create money for the U.S. Treasury, actually produce a surplus. They used a 10-year scoring model; $70 billion, 60 percent or so of the total savings this bill is alleged to produce--not savings, actual revenue, net revenue increase--was this program. Now it is gone. As Senator McCain correctly said, Judd Gregg deserves great credit for it because he put in the bill that the Secretary had to certify that this was a sound program. So after all the political smoke had been going on, after the bill had been passed, while they were defending it as a viable CLASS Act program that would actually produce revenue for the government, when she had to certify it, I suppose, under penalty of perjury--she could go to jail if she didn't do it correctly--she said she could not do so. It was never possible this bill was going to be a moneymaker for the U.S. Treasury. They double-counted, maybe $300 billion, $400 billion, $500 billion in money that is Medicare money also counted as income to fund an entirely new bill. That is going to come out also.…”