Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price on NBC’s Meet The Press: “We need a system that works for people.”
SECRETARY PRICE: “I firmly believe that nobody will be worse off financially in the process that we’re going through, understanding that they’ll have choices that they can select—the kind of coverage that they want for themselves and for their family, not [that] the government forces them to buy. So there’s costs that needs to come down and we believe we’re going to be able to do that through the system. There’s coverage that will go up. Remember, Chuck, there are 20 million folks right now in this nation who said to the Federal Government, ‘I’ll pay a penalty, or I’ll take a waiver. I’m not even going to get coverage in the system that we currently have.’ That may be a system that works for government or insurance, but it doesn’t work for people. We need a system that works for people.”
Director of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney on CNN’s State Of The Union: “The President was very clear on the campaign trail, he wanted to repeal and replace. That’s what the framework does.”
DIRECTOR MULVANEY: “Here’s what we’ve got, we have a framework. We have a really, really good bill that the White House did work with House and Senate leaders to come up with. But we encourage the House and Senate to try and make the bill better. We have laid out the things the President needs. It must repeal as much of Obamacare as it can, given these strange and arcane Senate rules that we have to use, and it must do as much replacement as it possibly can. The President was very clear on the campaign trail, he wanted to repeal and replace. That’s what the framework does— repeals as much as possible and gives us as much replacement as possible. If the House and Senate think they can make that bill a little bit better through the process, that’s what the legislative process is about, and it’s the legislative process that didn’t exist for Obamacare. We’ve already had two hearings in the House on this bill [and]another one this week. There will be another one next week before it comes to a final vote. And that’s even before it goes over to the Senate. So there are plenty of opportunities to make the bill better.”
Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn on Fox’s Fox News Sunday: “Anything that makes the bill better for Americans, we are willing to accept.”
COHN: “I think the President is very open and transparent on the issue that he’s been willing to accept improvements on the bill. We got out of our way, and the President has said this: . . . ‘Anything that makes the bill better for Americans, we are willing to accept.’ We’ve met with many groups over the last week, week and a half. We’ve talked with as many different groups as we possibly could, and anyone that comes up with an improvement, we are more than happy to accept. In fact, the President wants to implement many of these improvements. He’s very concerned that we have as many products out there as we can for consumers. He wants to have the ability for insurance companies to sell across state lines. In fact, he is insisting that insurance companies have the ability to sell across state lines.”
Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway on Fox News’ Media Buzz: Our Nation has “spent billions of dollars and many years helping other countries protect their sovereignty and their borders—it’s high time we did it [for] ourselves.”
CONWAY: “It’s a big country out there outside of the know-it-alls. And the big country out there listen[ed] to [the President] in the Joint Session address and they still know he is a man of action, a man of impact. They know that he is somebody who just looked them in the eye for an hour and said that he will repeal and replace Obamacare. He called ISIS savages. He said radical Islamic terrorism. He said we’ll build the wall. That we are a Nation that helps – [we have] spent billions of dollars and many years helping other countries protect their sovereignty and their borders – it’s high time we did it [for] ourselves.”
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures: “There have been jobs exported and not just to Mexico, to lots of other countries as well. That balance needs to be restored a bit and it needs to be made not just free trade but fair free trade.”
FOX NEWS’ MARIA BARTIROMO: “And so if a company thought, well, I could go produce my products in Mexico for a lot cheaper than I would in the U.S. and then sell it to the U.S. no problem, free trade, of course, they are going to do that and that really did hurt the American worker.”
SECRETARY WILBUR ROSS: “Oh no question about it. There have been jobs exported and not just to Mexico, to lots of other countries as well. That balance needs to be restored a bit and it needs to be made not just free trade but fair free trade. So if there is a new tri-lateral, we will add in an extra “F” that will be NAFFTA, North American Fair Free Trade Agreement.”
Director Mulvaney on ABC’s This Week: “What people want is to get care . . . they want to be able to afford to go to the doctor. That’s where Obamacare has failed them several times over.”
DIRECTOR MULVANEY: “What people want is to get care. People want, when they get sick, they want to be able to afford to go to the doctor. That’s where Obamacare has failed them several times over. That’s the problem we’re fixing. So that when you’re watching this program, when you get sick, you can afford to go to the doctor, because right now on Obamacare you can’t. I had it, George, I know. I have lived through this first hand. You didn’t have Obamacare. I did. $12,000, $15,000 a deductible for my family. Luckily, we could afford it. But people making much less than I did had that exact same plan, yes they got a subsidy to buy that plan, but they didn’t get a subsidy on their deductible. They could not afford to go to the doctor. That was a broken system. That was one of the many, many reasons that Obamacare was failing and people are begging us to replace it and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
