Quotes 2009-2010
"The other side is counting on people not having a good memory... These folks drove the economy into a ditch and want the keys back. You've got to say the same thing to them you say to your teenager: You can't have the keys back because you don't know how to drive yet..."
-President Obama, July 8 in Kansas City
"All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law."
-President Teddy Roosevelt, Speech to Congress 1905
"What the legislation needs are explicit rules... determining when regulators have to seize a troubled financial firm... no-exception rules requiring that complex financial derivatives be traded transparently. And so on... I would urge Senate leaders and the Obama administration not to settle for a weak bill... We need reform with a fighting chance of actually working."
-Paul Krugman, NY Times April 4, 2010
"We have just enshrined the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care. And it is an extraordinary achievement that has happened because of all of you and all the advocates across the country."
-President Obama, signing the Senate health care reform bill into law at the White House, March 23, 2010
"Obama took all his winnings and turned them over to Max Baucus."
-MSNBC's Howard Fineman analyzing Republican victory in Massachusetts special Senate election
“Maryland would not be in this mess of a monopolist bilking ratepayers for his $33 million golden parachute were it not for lawmakers’ disastrous decision in 1999 to deregulate our electricity system. Lawmakers must re-regulate Maryland’s electricity system right away.”
-Matthew Weinstein, PMEF Baltimore
"We need the voices of young people to transform this nation to live up to the meaning of its dream. I need your voice. Let's go change the world."
- President Obama at the health reform rally in a full UMD Comcast Center Sept. 17
"This is the cause of my life – to break the old gridlock and guarantee every American decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege."
-Sen. Ted Kennedy, 1932-2009
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.
We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
- President Barack Obama
"Private insurance is a bit like a fire department that turns a profit by letting buildings burn down... Insurers make money by denying claims. Money they spend on health care is money they lose (they even have a name for it: the "medical-loss ratio")."
- Wash. Post columnist Ezra Klein, Ghosts of Clinton Care, July 26
"I say there is no option but a public option! And I say to those who want a co-op, 'Be careful you don't get co-opted!' For those who say we need a trigger, I say, 'Be careful, you could be shooting down health care.' We need a public option that puts the public first and there is no option to doing that!"
-Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) at the Capitol Rally June 25. See videos, photos and clips.
"We want to create a public [health insurance] plan modeled on Medicare, with low administrative costs and freedom of choice of providers," Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md., in red jacket) told the health reform roundtable she held June 22 in Baltimore with Progressive Md. and our Health Care for America Now partners.
"Our current system is a combination of Adam Smith, Darth Vader and 'The Invasion of the Body Snatchers'... The same arguments we heard against Medicare are the same we're hearing now... That's why I'm for a public option that holds the private options accountable..."
-Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) in the Senate Health Committee hearing June 17
(See video beginning at minute 105)
"A public option large enough to have bargaining leverage to drive down drug prices and private-insurance premiums is the defining issue of universal health care. It's the only way to make health care affordable and prevent Medicare and Medicaid from eating up future federal budgets. An ersatz public option -- whether Kent Conrad's non-profit cooperatives, Olympia Snowe's 'trigger,' or regulated state-run plans -- won't do squat..."
-Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labor in his blog
"None of these plans should deny coverage on the basis of a preexisting condition, and all of these plans should include an affordable basic benefit package that includes prevention, and protection against catastrophic costs. I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest."
-President Obama, June 2 Letter to Congress
"A public health insurance option will force private health insurance companies to control cost, guarantee quality, stop hiding what they will and won’t cover, and put people’s health before corporate profit."
-Fred Mason, President, MD & DC AFL-CIO; See HCAN Release May 20
"The banks - hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created - are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."
-Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) May 1; See PBS Bill Moyers Journal
"We cannot afford not to go forward right now. We need to do it to do right by the American people and make sure that people have access to quality, affordable health care... In my view and I think the view of the majority of members of Congress, that alternative has to include a public [health insurance] option… We need to make sure that that [public health insurance] alternative is available to the American people."
-Rep. Chris Van Hollen, April 15, 20
"I was elected to Congress to apply a fiscally conservative philosophy to our nation's current challenges. Health care costs for families in the 1st District have been rising 3-4 times faster than wages in recent years. I intend to work with my colleagues this year to pass comprehensive health care reform legislation that will contain costs and protect consumers so that everyone gets the quality, affordable health care they need. We will bring greater transparency and competition to the health insurance market and end abuses. And above all, the upfront costs of these money-saving reforms will be paid for, not shifted onto our children and grandchildren."
-Rep. Frank Kratovil, April 16, 2009
"I want to thank Health Care for America Now, a great coalition in our state and across the country for saying, 'We can no longer wait.' I'm pleased to say we've made some progress..."
-Md. Congressman Chris Van Hollen endorsing Health Care for America Now!
"I vigorously support this proposal, and I am confident it will get an overwhelming majority."
-Md. Senate President Mike Miller, endorsing SB 663
for Public Campaign Funding. See Bill Summary
"[S]ome people argue that you can't do anything about health care because the economy comes first. They don't understand that health care is the biggest component of our economy and, when it's broken, that affects everything."
-President Obama, Feb. 10, from HCAN's Md. report
Quotes 2008
"If the majority of workers want a union, they should get a union... We should pass the Employee Free Choice Act to make it easier for unions to organize... that's why I will sign that bill when I become president..."
-President-elect Barack Obama, SEIU video
"If the collapse of the markets has left conservatism and Rubin's Wall Street centrism in tatters, it has handed liberalism the task of building a more sustainable economy from the wreckage of the old."
-Harold Meyerson, Columnist, Washington Post, Oct. 15
"We also desperately need an economic stimulus plan... that doesn't rely on the magic of tax cuts, but instead spends money where it's needed. (Aid to cash-strapped state and local governments, which are slashing spending at precisely the worst moment, is also a priority.)... One thing's for sure: The next administration’s economic team had better be ready to hit the ground running..."
-Paul Krugman, NY Times columnist & 2008 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics
"If the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to — a share in ownership, so that all the gains if the rescue plan works don’t go to the people who made the mess in the first place. That’s what happened in the savings and loan crisis: the feds took over ownership of the bad banks, not just their bad assets. It’s also what happened with Fannie and Freddie."
-Paul Krugman, New York Times column, Sept. 21
"How is it possible that the wealthiest state in the wealthiest nation in the world has a rising poverty rate and such a high poverty rate?"
-Matthew Weinstein, Progressive Maryland's Baltimore regional director
"We must establish a proactive agenda that has justice and equality at its core... this organizing will be slow work because we need to develop political organizations with constituencies who fully understand the choices facing them and who are committed to progressive social change for all of us... Our work is developing people, not just ideas."
-Suzanne Pharr, activist/author, from "In the Time of the Right"
"Senator Obama now has an increased obligation to make overhauling our special interest-driven campaign finance apparatus a top priority if elected.... While declining public funds for this election is regrettable, a failure on the part of the next president to help lead the fight to win grassroots-empowering public financing for all federal offices would be unforgivable."
-Nick Nyhart, Executive Director of Public Campaign, writing in the Huffington Post
"Our customers are being asked to pay a substantial premium for electricity and getting virtually no benefit from it."
-Maryland PSC Chairman Steven Larsen June 2 regarding the complaint filed by five states charging regional utilities with overcharging
"All too often we forget the soldiers who are on the front lines. We forget them by not addressing the hardship their service imposes on their families while they are gone. And too often we forget them when they come home and need help paying for health care and educational needs."
-Matthew Weinstein, Progressive Maryland's federal issues director
"There is no such thing as a free lunch [or] war. The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can't spend $3 trillion -- yes, $3 trillion -- on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home. "
-Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, author of "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict."
"State policy decisions in recent years affecting both benefit programs and tax systems have tended to widen the already growing gaps in the distribution of income. If they so choose, however, states can chart a different course. States can enact policies such as minimum wages and unemployment insurance reform that improve the distribution of income. In addition, states can pursue tax policies that can, in part, offset the growing inequality of pre-tax incomes."
-From PULLING APART: A State-by-State Analysis of Income Trends, a report by Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute, April 2008
"Today the voters went to the polls looking for a change, and they went out looking for new leadership that's finally going to put the public first. Tonight I stand here just a little bit humbled and really proud... they found it in me."
-Donna Edwards, winning candidate for Congress in Md. 4th District Democratic Primary Feb. 12, 2008 endorsed by Progressive Maryland
"Power deregulation is the worst policy blunder in modern [Maryland] history. Maryland lawmakers passed it after collectively taking $300,000 from the utilities and they've gotten $1 million since. You and I are feeling it now. Our electric bills are going to go up 800 bucks a year right now."
-Sean Dobson, PM executive director in Baltimore City Paper
[An analysis published by Progressive Maryland found candidates supporting deregulation got five times more power company campaign donations than deregulation opponents.]
