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I've written and passed laws to give Medicare beneficiaries access to life saving cancer drugs and to ensure that seniors don't have to give up the prospect of a cure when they go into hospice care.

When I ran for Congress I promised to help make health care affordable again.

Sometimes in this whole Medicare prescription drug debate, we focus on the prescription drug benefit, and I am glad we do because it is the first time we have ever offered real help to seniors, especially the poor, those in need.

They talked about me as if I were Mother Teresa, and that every time I get a paycheck I go and send it to poor people and that we spend every free moment helping out people less fortunate. That was an enormous exaggeration.

I always am a firm believer in you compensate people for their job, and so I did give them bonuses. We accomplished a lot in Congress, we passed health care reform. There were threats against their lives; they had a tough two years. They'd forgone any cost-of-living increase or any bonus before.

Like my colleagues, I did about 10 to 15 town hall meetings on this issue; and what I found is people came with a sincere interest to learn, a sincere interest to cut through the rhetoric and understand how this Medicare bill impacts them in their daily lives.

It is time that we provide clarity for our seniors, informing them of the services available that will lower the costs of their prescription drugs and strengthen the overall integrity of the Medicare entitlement.

I told them how excited I would be to go into space and how thrilled I was when Alan Shepard made his historic flight, and when John Kennedy announced on the news that the men had landed safely on the moon, and how jealous I was of those men.

As a former professional patient advocate, I believe prescription drugs are an essential part of high-quality medical treatment, and I supported enactment of the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act.