You are what this debate is about. It is about good people who come to America to work, to raise their families, to contribute to their communities, … - Ted Kennedy

The power and potential of prescription drugs have revolutionized health care. We break the promise we made then if we leave senior citizens with a kind of half-Medicare that leaves them without medicines essential to health or even life itself. Some say that in light of the budget projections, this nation cannot afford prescription drug coverage. But just as a family budget is a statement of a family's priorities, a national budget is a statement of national priorities -- and our national priorities are profoundly wrong if we continue to force senior citizens to choose between their prescriptions and their food or their heat or a decent home. It is long past time to close the gap on prescription drugs -- to make Medicare whole again -- and 2002 can and must be the year when we do it. This effort -- and the plight of the elderly -- must not become the pretext for a partisan plan which disguises yet another attempt to privatize Medicare. Our seniors deserve better than that. So I am here today to say that we will not rest, we will not give up, we will not stop until our senior citizens have a genuine Medicare prescription drug benefit that works well for all of them. If we have the will, we can take three other steps -- this year -- to ease the growing national crisis over access to health care.

I get up very early in the morning. I enjoy the quietness, the stillness, the rawness in the winter and fall. It's a special time.

There were some who said we should be silent about our differences on issues during this convention. But the heritage of the Democratic Party has been a history of democracy. We fight hard because we care deeply about our principles and purposes. We did not flee this struggle. And we welcome this contrast with the empty and expedient spectacle last month in Detroit, where no nomination was contested, no question was debated, and no one dared to raise any doubt or dissent.