Jeff Merkley Quotes

We have a duty to ensure that patients don't have to worry whether they'll be dropped from their coverage if they get sick. Small business owners shouldn't have to break the bank to provide coverage to their employees. And families should not be forced into bankruptcy because of a medical crisis.

Over and over again, I hear from Oregonians that we need real health care reform that provides every American with access to quality, affordable care.

I grew up in Southern Oregon. My father was a sawmill worker and a logger, and his job put food on the table.

Too many Americans who are uninsured or under-insured do not receive regular checkups because they can't afford coverage or their insurance doesn't cover enough of the costs. The lack of preventive care results in countless emergency room visits and health care disasters for families.

Budgets are nothing if not statements of priorities.

For too long, tricks and traps in mortgages, credit cards, and other financial transactions have stripped wealth from working families.

We have our nominee, and it's is Secretary [Hillary] Clinton. I do hope that Secretary Clinton will take into account the huge resonance of the vision that Senator [Berny] Sanders was putting forward.This has inspired millions of citizens - a style of campaign we've never seen before winning 22 states, extraordinary number of caucuses. Now the challenge is to bring the two halves of the party together.

Decades of scientific research has proven that carbon pollution is harmful to human health and causes global warming.

What [Bernie] Sanders has done is he's focused the nation on the fact that these things are not inevitable. They are the result of policies. We can do better to create an economy that works well for working Americans.

Imagine if Congress always put the interests of polluters ahead of the health of our families. Our rivers and lakes would be choked with sewage. Acid rain would pour down from smog-filled skies. Hundreds of thousands more of our neighbors, friends, and loved ones would be victims of cancer, heart disease, and asthma.

Americans have powerfully sensed that we're off track. There is a structural challenge in our economy that needs to be addressed.

We can no longer continue with a status quo energy policy. We must create sustainable clean energy jobs and leave the planet to our children and grandchildren in better shape than we found it.

A budget should be judged by whether it creates a foundation for the success of American working families striving to buy a house, or to send their kids to college, or to save a little for retirement and, if they're lucky, a vacation.