Media

This afternoon, President Obama delivered a speech to the American Medical Association on the urgent need for comprehensive health care reform. The President outlined the cost of inaction, explaining that Americans are currently spending over $2,000,000,000,000 a year on health care which, if not addressed, will result in even higher premiums, further erosion of benefits and increased number of uninsured Americans. The President said "when it comes to the cost of our health care...the status quo is unsustainable":

“Today, we have an opportunity to protect public health and prevent disease. And today, we have an opportunity to honor our responsibility to our children to protect them from the harm that can come to them from the use of tobacco."

This afternoon, the House voted 413 to 0 to condemn the violent attack at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum yesterday and to honor the bravery and dedication of museum employees and security personnel. Officer Stephen Johns died in the line of duty--doing his job to protect those who came to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Speaker Pelosi:

In the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum -- anyone who's visited there knows -- there is a flame that burns in remembrance to all who died in the Holocaust. It lights the room over a coffin of earth gathered from the death camps, concentration camps, sites of mass execution and ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, and from cemeteries of American and European soldiers who fought and died to defeat Nazi Germany.

“Jack Henning will be long remembered for his distinguished career on the front lines of the labor movement, fighting passionately for justice, equality, human rights and jobs in California, and across America, and throughout the world."

“And so, while the Holocaust Memorial Museum is about something that happened in the past, it is a memorial and a reminder to us about ridding our societies of these kinds of attitudes. So how ironic that this person, this individual, would go into that museum with hate in his heart, a gun in his hand, and kill this beautiful man, Stephen Johns, who really gave his life -- he guarded others with his life."