Emanuel's previous statements on rationing were about the "allocation of very scarce medical interventions such as organs and vaccines" such as who should get a "liver for transplantation". Ezekiel said that McCaughey's euthanasia claims were a "willful distortion of my record". Jim Rutennberg said that Emanuel's critics oversimplified complex issues, such as who should get a kidney. Such rationing was said to be unavoidable because of scarcity, and because a scarce resource such as a liver is "indivisible". Emanuel said that McCaughey took words out of context, omitting qualifiers such as "Without overstating it (and without fully defending it) ... Clearly, more needs to be done ..." Emanuel once compared the word "rationing" to George Carlin’s seven words you can't say on television. In 1994 Emanuel said in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, "Just because we are spending a lot of money on patients who die does not mean that we can save a lot of money on end of life care."