Social Safety Net
- I behaved badly, and I will have to live with that, but my own inexcusable arrogance is not a flaw in the Affordable Care Act.
- I think we may need to call [Obamacare] something in the future different, but it is working…Obamacare, no question, has a very bad brand that has been driven intentionally by a lot of misinformation and a lot of paid advertising.
- But the law is not a breast that fills itself with milk. Nor are the lacteal veins of the law supplied with milk from a source outside the society. Nothing can enter the public treasury for the benefit of one citizen or one class unless another citizen or other classes have been forced to send it in. If every person draws from the treasury the amount that he has put in, it is true, then, that the law plunders nobody. But this procedure does nothing for the persons who have no money. It does not promote equality of income. The law can be an instrument of equalization only when it takes from some persons and gives to others, other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.
- 50 years later we need to have a conversation…not just about civil rights, C-I-V-I-L, but about silver rights, S-I-L-V-E-R. That is to say: economic rights, economic freedoms. Black folk lag behind in every leading economic category 50 years later, even in the Obama era. And the bottom line is this: if you don’t have economic freedom, you really ain’t free.
- I got to be a leader of HHS during these most historic times. We are on the front lines of a long overdue national change — fixing a broken health system. Now, this is the most meaningful work I’ve ever been a part of. In fact, it’s been the cause of my life. And I knew it wouldn’t be easy. There’s a reason that no earlier President was successful in passing health reform, despite decades of attempts.
- I’ve got to admit, I don’t get it. Why are folks working so hard for people not to have health insurance? …Many of the tall tales that have been told about this law have been debunked. There are still no death panels. Armageddon has not arrived. Instead, this law is helping millions of Americans, and in the coming years it will help millions more.
- Do you want smaller government with less handouts, or do you want a low minimum wage? Because you cannot have both. If Colonel Sanders isn't going to pay the lady behind the counter enough to live on, then Uncle Sam has to. And I, for one, am getting a little tired of helping highly-profitable companies pay their workers.
- [P]retty soon the snake starts eating its own tail: We underfund public services, therefore public services don't work, therefore we underfund them.