Cruel Joke

I was mildly excited to see the guy so many of us voted for show up at the AFL-CIO Convention to speak about health care.

It's time to give every opportunity to Americans that members of Congress give to themselves.

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I've also said that one of the options in this exchange should be a public option.

Now, let me...

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Let me...

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Let me be clear. Let me be clear, because there's been a lot of misinformation out here about this. This would just be an option. Nobody'd be forced to choose it. No one with insurance would be affected.

But what it would do is offer Americans more choices and promote real competition and put pressure on private insurers to make their policies affordable and treat their customers better.

Now, when you're talking with some of your friends and neighbors, they might say, "Well, that all sounds pretty good, but how you going to pay for it?" That's a legitimate question, because I inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit when I came into office. That's the other thing people have been a little selective about. They don't seem to remember how we got into this mess.

But it's a legitimate question: How are we going to dig ourselves out of this big financial hole we're in? So let me try and answer. The plan I'm proposing is going to cost $900 billion over 10 years. That's real money. Although that's less than we spent on Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It's less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed during the previous administration. Wars and tax cuts that were not paid for and ballooned our deficit to record levels and didn't help America's working families.

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We won't make -- we won't make that mistake again. We will not pay for health insurance reform by adding to our deficits. I will not sign a bill that adds a dime to our deficits, either now or in the future.

What we will do is pay for it by eliminating hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud and waste and abuse, including billions of dollars in subsidies for insurance companies that pad their profits but aren't improving care.

I'd love to believe you man, I really would. But I don't believe he can, or is even willing, to achieve these standards. Although, nice opening line.