Jay Rockefeller: “one thing that occurs to me listening to this debate is that some very, very important principles followed by amendments…”

“one thing that occurs to me listening to this debate is that some very, very important principles followed by amendments are being put before the Senate in a context that the American people do not fully understand nor have they any reason to because it has not really been discussed with them. In speaking quite honestly, this sort of grew up within the Finance Committee, of which I am a member, and it became a kind of a fluent subject within the Finance Committee. It got a credence--had people for it, had people against it--it got its own momentum, and the Finance Committee was acting apart from the rest of the Senate, and apart from the rest of America. I am not by definition innately opposed to means testing but I am oppose to doing things before they receive what I call a larger consideration, which I think falls into the commission on Medicare which is what I introduced as a bill 2 years ago. It seems to me when you are dealing with something in a State, for example, like West Virginia, where the average senior citizen income is $10,700 a year, you really do not make decisions like this--or like a number of other issues that have been before us --without a larger discussion with the American people, a larger context being placed before the American people. We have traditionally done that with major pieces of legislation. This discussion has come out of a kind of sanctuary of privileged discussion.”