John Breaux Quotes

I'm committed to universal health coverage and education.

The people of South and Central Texas and the Coastal Bend need jobs, they need health care, they need water infrastructure improvements, they need a quality education, and they need the resources to keep our borders safe and secure.

People don't trust the federal government as it relates to health care.

We should make it so that young people pay their fair share for health care, and nothing more. And instead of Washington telling us what to buy, let's get back to letting every American choose the plan that's best for them and their family.

We don't want the efficiency of the federal government and the compassion of the IRS to run our health care.

I believe, unlike people that are totally free-market, laissez-faire fundamentalists, that there is an important role that the government can play - one, in providing public goods, whether it's education, health care, or other things, and two, supervising countercyclical policy - stimulus, whether it's monetary, fiscal, or otherwise.

As a member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, I will continue to work to bring resources, accountability and relief to our health care system.

Countries that need monies so that they can provide health care and education and shelter to their people shouldn't have to repay debts that we knowingly lent to bad regimes long since gone; and all illegitimate debts - debts lent to these terrible dictators like Saddam Hussein, like Suharto, like Marcos - must also be canceled.

People were concerned about national security, and that precluded us from having the opportunity to break through on the issues that we cared most about - the economy, education and health care.

Strong advocacy for education, health care and worker safety will be indispensable if they are to get their fair share of President Bush's austere budget for the next fiscal year.

Health and education are always issues.

Clearly, some of the reason people embrace alternatives and reject vaccines is that they are angry and mistrustful of government and of pharmaceutical conglomerates. More than that, we pay too much for health care, it's not good enough, and the system is too complex. We need alternatives.

True health care reform cannot happen in Washington. It has to happen in our kitchens, in our homes, in our communities. All health care is personal.

I spent 28 years working in healthcare. I thought I'd retired from non-profit community health care.

You can't have public health without working with the public sector. You can't have public education without working with the public sector in education.

In 1995, world military spending totaled nearly $800 billion. If we redirected just $40 billion of those resources over the next 10 years to fighting poverty, all of the world's population would enjoy basic social services, such as education, health care, nutrition, reproductive health, clean water and sanitation.

We need to accept the seemingly obvious fact that a toxic environment can make people sick and that no amount of medical intervention can protect us. The health care community must become a powerful political lobby for environmental policy and legislation.

I fully support a national health care program for the U.S.

Is Medicare socialism? You want to get rid of Medicare. And a lot of the people against health care do. I want to preserve it and grow it.

The freedom to be able to offer education, human services, and health care in accordance with our own identity as a church should not be denied us simply because there may be the perception of a political majority who favors a new understanding of the American tradition of pluralism.

I think history would say that medical research has, throughout many changes of parties, remained as one of the shining lights of bipartisan agreement, that people are concerned about health for themselves, for their families, for their constituents.

Today there are people trying to take away rights that our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers fought for: our right to vote, our right to choose, affordable quality education, equal pay, access to health care. We the people can't let that happen.

Our health care system is terribly broken… Health comes from much more than health care and health care is much more than hospitals. We do a good job on treatment and a terrible job on prevention.

Education, day care, health care—there's not a parent in the country that doesn't have a stake in one of these issues.

Health-care policy is choked by an aristocracy of special interests. If we don't take these groups on and rein in costs, health care will continue to bleed our economy white.