Political Quotes

“I thank my good friend from New York. Madam Speaker, I rise on behalf of the seniors in my community. Before we enacted Medicare in 1965, almost half of all seniors in our country had no health insurance coverage. That's why the creation of Medicare was so important, and now every one of America's seniors has access to quality health care coverage. But today their care is at risk and under assault. The America we enjoy, as the result of the lifetimes of hard work by our seniors, and as they enter their well-deserved retirements, there are those who would callously rip away the commitment this Nation made to them. The Republican budget for fiscal year 2012 is a Path to the Past and will return us to the dark days when seniors agonized over access to health care. The Republican budget ends the guaranteed coverage of Medicare and replaces it with a grossly inadequate voucher system, subjugating seniors once again to the whims of private insurance companies and forcing them to bear the brunt of spiraling health care costs by themselves. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said seniors in 2030 would pay three times more for coverage under the Republican plan. The Republican budget reopens the doughnut hole in Medicare part D, forcing seniors once again to pay thousands of dollars of out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drug medication. I was proud to fix that inequity and eliminate the doughnut hole last year.…”