Jim McDermott

If you play by the rules and you work hard, you are running in place; you are not getting ahead.

We have been buried in this tsunami of propaganda that the problem here is there is too much spending and there is not enough tax relief for the people at the top.

I am having trouble figuring out what the upside of getting rid of municipal bonds is...

I personally favor physician-led ACOs. If all of the ACO development is hospital-focused, you tend to get more consolidation, more market power that can lead to higher prices for private payers.

Some of the things in the ACA, the Affordable Care Act, these accountable care organizations, it seems to me that there are a lot of problems out there about how you control costs and how medical systems can move to do that that are…

I think Members of the Committee ought to be aware of this particular article that shows that the ACA is already having an effect before these things go into impact.

I just want to take a second to enter into the record, or ask unanimous consent to enter into the record, an article from The Washington Post by Sarah Kliff dated today.

One of the issues that we hear about, all of us go to various events, people come up and say, I can't find a doctor and I am on Medicare.

So as we take on 30 million new people under the Affordable Care Act, we are going to be in some difficulty with primary care physicians?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am one of those that believes that you can have whatever opinion you want, but you can't have your own facts.

I believe we can continue to improve cost and quality for everyone while still protecting benefits.

I appreciate Mr. Hackbarth coming back. You were here the other week.

Mr. Chairman, I am grateful for your calling this hearing today. It is one of our regular reports from CMS.

We need to bring value over volume to the Medicare program.

We are at a critical moment here. Not just whether we will replace the sequester, but what it will be replaced with?

We should pass a budget that meets those tests and never pass one that doesn't.

There are real impacts to middle class folks, to seniors due to the sequester.

It would still include cuts. It would include reductions in spending growth over 10 years, and it would also include tax revenue.

We need a sustainable Pentagon budget that reflects a sound national security strategy.

Investment, not austerity, is what our economy needs to get working again.

The Back to Work Budget creates nearly 7 million jobs in this year alone, putting Americans back to work rebuilding and repairing our country.

The President has said he wants to innovate our way to continue to lead the world.

And in my view, that is like the Indian tribes in the West where we always knew when a tribe was going to end when they began to eat the seed corn.

Does it create jobs? Does it address inequality? Does it raise revenues in a fair way?