Political Quotes

“let me just pick up on a couple of the points my friend from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, made. The Republicans often say, and Senator Enzi said it now, that Democrats cut $714 billion from Medicare. To the best of my knowledge, not one penny involved in those cuts cut any benefits to the American people. What the Affordable Care Act attempted to do--and maybe we made some progress, as Senator Enzi pointed out, last night with the so-called doc fix--is to make Medicare more efficient. What is wrong with that? What is wrong with saving money? What the American people want us to do is make programs more efficient. In fact, Senator Enzi was talking about that a moment ago. He is right. But the idea, the implication, that those cuts resulted in benefit cuts is not accurate. Furthermore, what some of that money--those savings--went to is filling, plugging the doughnut hole so that seniors would not have to pay money out of their own pockets for prescription drugs. So if you could save money in a bureaucracy--and God knows the U.S. health care system is the most wasteful and bureaucratic of any in the world--if we can make the system more efficient, save money, put that money into helping seniors afford prescription drugs, what is the problem with that? I do not think so. Senator Enzi talked about the IRS and people having difficulty making connections, which is clearly not right. He is right.…”