Commerce, Justice, Science, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I have been in the Senate for quite a while. I have seen a lot, but I have never seen anything like the plan House Democrats hatched this week to jam their health care bill through Congress and over the objections of the American people.

Americans woke up yesterday thinking they had seen everything in this debate already. Then they heard the latest. They heard that Democrats want to approve the Senate version of the health care bill without actually standing up and taking a vote on it. Let me say that again. They heard that Democrats over in the House want to approve the Senate bill without actually voting on it. These Democrats want to approve a bill that rewrites one-sixth of the economy, forces taxpayers to pay for abortions, raises taxes in the middle of a recession, and slashes Medicare for seniors, without leaving their fingerprints on it. In other words, they want to get around the very purpose of a rollcall vote. They want to hide what they are doing from the American people whom they seem to view as an obstacle. They want to hide what they are doing from the American people whom they see as an obstacle to what they are trying to do.

Well, it won't work. They realized that yesterday when they saw the public reaction to their plan. Americans are more outraged than ever. Americans are shocked at these tactics. They are fed up, and they have had enough. The longer Democratic leaders ignore this outrage and ignore these questions, the worse it is going to get.

Democrats have lost their perspective in this debate. They have lost their way. They do not even seem to care what the public thinks. Speaker Pelosi said yesterday that they will do ``whatever it takes'' to ensure this bill becomes law. While she is at it, she is throwing other legislation into the bill that does not have anything to do with health care--major legislation that would enable the government to take over the student loan industry without any debate whatsoever. That has been their strategy all along. Anytime one of their proposals meets resistance, they look for a way to get around it. But the schemes they have used end up making their proposals even more repellant than they originally were. And this latest scheme is the most outrageous one yet.

What has happened is they are trapped in a vicious cycle that someone over there needs to bring to a halt. This is now a fight between Democrats and their own constituents, and the only way to stop this madness is for a few courageous Democrats to step forward and put a stop to it.

Historians will remember this as a new low in this debate: the week America was introduced to the scheme-and-deem approach to legislating--the scheme-and-deem approach to legislating. They will remember this as the week Congress tried to pull the wool over the eyes of the public in order to get around their will. And they will remember the men and women who stand up and put an end to it.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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