Political Quotes

“Mr. President, as part of this discussion, I want to mention something that was very significant that happened last night. It happened after the press went to bed, I think, but a very important thing, and that is a thing called the doc fix passed. The SGR passed this body last night in a very bipartisan way, after a series of amendments that were open floor amendments. That is what is supposed to happen around here. One of the reasons I mention that is, I have always said if you can't see a doctor, you don't have insurance at all. With the way we have been setting up Medicare payments for doctors, we have been driving them out of the profession. We have been eliminating doctors. We have been having doctors tell their kids don't become a doctor, because of what Congress is doing, holding them hostage every 6 months. That got taken care of last night. I don't know, we have been doing that for, I think, about 18 years, just 1 fix at a time. So it is nice that we are finally able to make that permanent. I mentioned that was Medicare. This is the first budget the Republicans have gotten to participate in in many years, but the Democrats got to work on the health care bill, and that was part of their budget. In fact, it was part of the reconciliation in the budget, which is a special way of passing something without 60 votes. In that budget they took $714 billion from Medicare, and they didn't put it into Medicare.…”