Graham Platner

I know that we can do it because the VA does it, right?

That program exists.

The VA only has problems when Republicans cut its budget.

When we fund it and we resource it, it does a spectacular job.

In Maine, the VA is awesome.

And it's awesome because we have a small population and the resources and employees, the ratio for the population it's serving, it's a good ratio.

So it works.

I've lived in other parts of the country where the VA system is really hard to deal with because they don't get the funding and therefore the outcome.

It's almost as though you get what you pay for, whoever would have guessed.

When I think about moments in American history where we had to address systemic problems, big ones, there are always going to be times of experimentation and, frankly, growing pains.

And the only way it ever works is when you have people in positions of power who have the political will to try to drive it forward.

I mean, this is what the New Deal was.

The New Deal was FDR having built a broad coalition, having political power, and then really just ramming things through, making them happen.

Some of them failed.

And then they changed.

They allowed to be – they were imaginative.

They experimented.

Things worked.

Things didn't work.

I mean the NRA worked for a little while and then it kind of didn't.