I think that the millions and millions of young Americans, young Americans, who have health care today, who wouldn't have had it if the president hadn't acted are better off.
Any time you have loose ballots, you have to worry about shenanigans. It's a shame such a hard-fought election has to come down to something like this.
But obviously, we're looking for all good ideas to help deal with our long-term debt problem. This is something that is going to affect our economy. It affects our kids. And we need to deal with it.
But we are not going to stand by and go back to allowing people with preexisting conditions to be discriminated against, go back to the situation where people can be thrown off their insurance simply because they become seriously ill or you can't get on your parents' insurance after the age of 20.
But you say, does it represent change? The change is that we are fighting an insurance industry that has killed health reform for generations. They're spending tens of millions of dollars right now to defeat this bill, and we're on the doorstep of winning a great victory for the American people.
I have never believed in the Wizard of Oz theory of consulting, that I am all-knowing and all-seeing, and that everyone around me is kind of a backbencher.
I think President Obama is a committed, practicing nonideologue. He's consumed by neither tactics nor ideology. He is more concerned about outcomes than he is about process and categorizations.
No one wants to go back to a situation where, if you have a pre-existing medical condition, you, you can be deprived of coverage. No one wants to go back to a situation where, if you get seriously ill, you can get thrown off your insurance. Seniors don't want to go back to paying more for their prescription drugs.
The place where we don't agree is on whether there should be some restraint on insurance companies and whether they should be allowed to run wild. We believe there should be some restraint; some on the other side don't think so.
The truth is that as we move forward, if one side says we can't raise any taxes on anybody or any interest, and the other side says we can't cut anything, we're obviously not going to make progress on this. And our interest is in making progress on this.
We agree with Simpson and Bowles and others who have looked at this. What's necessary is to stabilize the debt and then work from there. You can't balance the budget in the short term because to do that would be to ratchet down the economy.
You know, we - if, for example, Jerry Brown can withstand, you know, what will probably end up being $200 million of spending by his opponent and get elected governor of California, that will be a big victory in the nation's largest state.
People understand we're on the doorstep of doing something really historic that will help the American people and strengthen our country for the long run.
We don't want to go back to the same policies and the same practices that drove our economy into a ditch, that punished the middle class, and that led us to this catastrophe. We have to keep moving forward.
