Political Quotes

“I join my colleagues here from the Finance Committee. Although I don't want to admit it, it was 10 years ago that we had this discussion in the Finance Committee--my colleagues from Maryland, from Delaware, and from Oregon. What people don't realize--even the Presiding Officer knows we spent a lot of time talking about healthcare. This was not ``let's have a few meetings and roll out a bill.'' There was a very long period. In fact, the Chair knows that, in fact, our side got a lot of heat for a lot of dialogue that happened with him and our colleague from Maine at the time--a lot of heat for dialogue with her. I think there was a period of time, about 6 or 7 months, where every single day I went to at least one thing in the discussion of the healthcare policy--at least one thing every day for like 6 months. That wasn't even the markup. Those weren't even the meetings. That was just the time period where the committee had designated various subgroups so we would talk about policy. I don't know if the two of you remember that period, but my recollection is every single day I was going to something regarding the healthcare policy and listening to experts and recommendations, and then, of course, we had these--I call them more roundtables than hearings. We had a lot of roundtable discussions, and we obviously went through a very formal bill process. There is a little bit of irony that we are the ones out here today still talking about this healthcare bill.…”