Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I would agree with the comments made by the chairman of the Finance Committee. In the repeal-and-replace proposal we have laid out ideas that again I think across the aisle there is going to be common agreement on. I know we have been joined by my good friend the Senator from Oklahoma. No one knows more about health care and has been a stronger voice on entitlement reform than the Senator from Oklahoma. We have spent an awful lot of time wrestling with how we get to that common cause. These commonsense reforms that move us closer to quality rather than quantity are a first step. Also, a first step is trying to relieve the annual or sometimes every-6-month fire drill we go through where health care providers across the country have to rush to Congress to try to get a patch in place, which at the end of the day we know we will put in place. The way we put the patch in place more often than not is simply passing more cost to the providers in an outyear. This is the kind of budget gimmickry that quite honestly we tried to address in our so-called Gang of 6 that would have had more constraints. We didn't get it done. We have another opportunity today--not to solve the whole problem, but by getting rid of SGR, by getting rid of OCO, we are moving two of the accounting and gimmickry obstacles, which would help clear the decks toward the ultimate debate we are going to have about tax reform and about retirement reform.…”