Political Quotes

“Thank you, Mr. President. Again, I am here joining my Democratic colleagues from the Senate Finance Committee. I believe that folks in Virginia and, for that matter, folks across the country got a reprieve today when the majority leader indicated that we were not going to vote on the piece of legislation that he brought forward, a piece of legislation which, as has been acknowledged by the CBO, would take 22 million Americans off of healthcare, would transfer close to $800 billion of costs currently borne jointly by both the Federal and State partnership in Medicaid and then thrust that cost upon the Governor of North Carolina, the Governor of Virginia, and a host of others. I can't recall in my time here in the Senate where a proposal has been as universally panned by organizations from the left, right, center, and everywhere in between. As perhaps the President is now acknowledging with the majority leader and a number of other Republican Senators, using his own quote, that ``nobody knew healthcare [was] so complicated.'' The fact is, the vast majority of Members on both sides of the aisle have realized healthcare is extraordinarily complicated. It is why it took years to fashion the ACA and why there are many of us, again, on this side of the aisle who continue to say we acknowledge, years after implementation of the ACA, that there are many things that need to be fixed, but the only way they are going to be fixed is if we do it in a bipartisan fashion.…”