Political Quotes

“Mr. President, if I could just pick up on the comments of my colleague from Hawaii, we had a comical discussion 2 days ago in the Democratic caucus lunch. Comedy isn't that unusual in a caucus with Al Franken, but the comic discussion was about how we would describe to the American public what a skinny repeal is. It was kind of phraseology that we might understand; how do we describe that to the American public? We took about half an hour to try to figure out how to do it, but about 2 hours ago, one of our Republican colleagues did it in 5 seconds. He said--and this is the Senator from South Carolina--that the skinny repeal is a fraudulent disaster. That is what Senator Graham said--the skinny repeal is a fraudulent disaster. He did such a better job than we did of describing what the bill is, and it is a fraudulent disaster because it hurts people. It takes health insurance away, according to the CBO, from 16 million people, and it would jack up premiums in a compounding 20 percent this year, then an additional 20 percent--40 percent the next year. That is why it is a fraudulent disaster. But some Members, as was described by my colleague from Hawaii, are entertaining that: Even though we call it a fraudulent disaster, we can vote on it because, don't worry, the House will create an opportunity for us to fix it and make it better.…”