Nancy Pelosi (The Hill) on getting a health care bill: “We will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in.”

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Democrats’ attempts to move forward with health reform legislation: “They are still trying to find a way to shove this down the throats of the American people.”

Tom Harkin (The Hill) on the deal that almost was: “We had an agreement, with the House, the White House and the Senate. We sent it to [the Congressional Budget Office] to get scored and then Tuesday happened and we didn’t get it back.”

Tom Carper (The Hill) on the prospect of persuading just one Senate Republican to vote for the pending legislation: “I think it’s a bridge too far.”

Barack Obama (ABC News) on the health bill: “It’s an ugly process and it looks like there are a bunch of backroom deals.”

Nancy Pelosi (New York Times) responding to Obama: “The American people don’t care about process.”

Paul Krugman (New York Times): “Politics is supposed to be about achieving something more than your own re-election.”

Robert Laszewski (health industry consultant): “The well has been poisoned. The Republican base is not going to let any Republican senator take Democrats off the meat hook they are on now.”

Ron Nehring (California Republican Party chairman) on the single-payer proposal for the state: “California Democrats are either tone-deaf or delusional. They’re determined to double down on a $200 billion health care plan that voters don’t want and taxpayers can’t afford.”

Tom Bevan (Real Clear Politics blog) on Tuesday night coverage of the Massachusetts senatorial election on MSNBC: “Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, positively enraged that Massachusetts dared to elect a Republican, delivered two hours of nonstop bilious rage toward the state’s voters, calling them ‘irrational’ and ‘teabaggers,’ engaged in ‘a total divorce from reality,’ and hinting that they’re vicious racists to boot.”

Keith Olbermann (MSNBC): “In Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against woman and against politicians with whom he disagrees.”

The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne: “Yes, it will be an ugly time for Democrats if Coakley loses.”

David Gergen (on Larry King): “This will be the vote heard around the world.”

Lanny Davis (Wall Street Journal): “It’s the substance, stupid!”

Paul Krugman (New York Times): “Democrats have to do whatever it takes to enact a health care bill. Passing such a bill won’t be their political salvation — but not passing a bill would surely be their political doom.”

CNBC’s Jim Cramer: ”I think investors who are nervous about the dictatorship of the Pelosi proletariat will feel at ease, and we could have a gigantic rally off a Coakley loss and a Brown win.”

Ed Schultz (MSNBC): “I’d cheat to keep Brown from winning.”

Don’t Know Why

Sen. Chris Dodd (CNBC): Health reform “is hanging on by a thread.”

Sen. Ben Nelson (Fremont Tribune): “I think it was a mistake to take health care on as opposed to continuing to spend the time on the economy.”

Daily Kos: He Who Pays The Piper: Jonathan Gruber, who has been the biggest proponent of the [health insurance] excise tax… did not disclose that he was paid by the HHS to the tune of $297,600 in his recent and ongoing contract to provide technical assistance for evaluation options for national healthcare reform.

Sen. Bernie Sanders on the Senate health bill: “The insurance companies are going to make out like bandits; the drug companies are going to make out like bandits… Nothing was done that didn’t serve the big money interests.”

Scott Gottlieb (New York Post): “The plan creates a single national health-insurance policy. Consumers’ only real option is to trade higher co-pays for lower premiums. But we’ll all get the same package of benefits established by a series of new agencies and an ‘insurance czar’ seated in Washington.”

Paul Krugman (New York Times): “There are three main groups of critics” of the Senate health bill: “the crazy right,” “the Bah Humbug … fiscal scolds,” and the uncompromising “progressives.” [Those on the right are either insane or morally defective, while those on the left are merely mistaken.]

George Will (Washington Post): “Reid had two advantages — the spending, taxing and borrowing powers of the federal leviathan, and an almost gorgeous absence of scruples or principles. Principles are general rules, such as: Nebraska should not be exempt from burdens imposed on the other 49 states.

Obama to Congressman: “Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) on Republican opponents of the health bill: “They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist.”

David Broder (Washington Post) on the need to hold his nose: “Incapable of summoning his colleagues to statesmanship, [Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid] made the deals look crass and parochial … encasing a historic achievement in a wrapping of payoff and patronage.”

Sen. Ben Nelson: “My vote is not for sale, period.”

Howard Dean on the Senate health care bill: “This is an insurance company’s dream. This is the Washington scramble, and it’s a shame. … You will be forced to buy insurance. If you don’t, you’ll pay a fine.”

Jean-François Revel (Last Exit to Utopia): “Some important part of every society consists of people who actively want tyranny: either to exercise it themselves or — much more mysteriously — to submit to it.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders: “Can I sit up here or stand here with a straight face and say, ‘We have got strong cost-containment provisions in this legislation?’ That if you’re an ordinary person who has employer-based health care, that your premiums are not going to go up in the next eight years based on what’s in this bill?’ I can’t say that. It’s just not accurate.”

Marc Siegel, M.D. (USA Today): “How long will it be before a federal guideline emerges about the age when hearing aids are no longer beneficial? Or when knee replacements for the elderly aren’t worth the cost and effort?”

John Allen Paulos (professor of mathematics at Temple University): “If screening catches the breast cancers of some asymptomatic women in their 40s, then it would also catch those of some asymptomatic women in their 30s. But why stop there? Why not monthly mammograms beginning at age 15?”

Jonathan Bush (CEO of Athenahealth) on health reform: “I still have to keep going to Washington and sucking up… Because the problem is when you have a baby with an Uzi, right, they might accidentally mow you down. But here’s the thing . . . they’re brilliant people. It’s just that the idea of a market in health care never occurred to them.”

Jonathan Bush (CEO of Athenahealth) on stimulus money for health I.T.: “It is kind of too bad that all these software companies that we’re really close to putting out of business, these terrible legacy companies, with code that was written in the ’70s, are going to get life support. …What it is, basically, is a federally sponsored sale on old-fashioned software.”

Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, 1988:

Massachusetts will (now) be the first state in the country to enact universal health insurance. 

Oregon Governor Barbara Roberts, 1989:

Today our dreams of providing effective and affordable health care to all Oregonians have come true. 

Tennessee Governor Ned McWherter, 1992: 

Tennessee will (now) cover at least 95 percent of its citizens

Vermont Governor Howard Dean, 1992:

This is an incredibly exciting moment that should make all Vermonters proud.