WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor Saturday night prior to the vote to move forward with a partisan health care bill which increases premiums, raises taxes and slashes Medicare:

“Mr. President, the nation is watching the Senate tonight. The American people know how important this vote is. They’ve seen the bill the Democratic Leaders want to impose on them, and they want to know where the rest of us will stand.

“This bill itself is a massive monument to bureaucracy and spending. But at its core it’s really quite simple.

“At a moment when more than one out of ten working Americans is looking for a job, at a time when the Chinese are lecturing us about our debt, this bill—this bill right here costs $2.5 trillion government doesn’t have. And cannot afford.

“It imposes punishing taxes on almost everyone. It raises health insurance premiums on the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance and if that were not bad enough, it slashes Medicare by half a trillion dollars. Anyone who votes aye tonight, Mr. President, is voting for all of these things.

“Now Mr. President it is a fact, a vote in favor of proceeding to this bill is a vote in favor of adding to the tax burden of the American people in the midst of double-digit unemployment. A vote in favor of proceeding to this bill is a vote to raise health insurance premiums on people who were told, they were told, that they could expect their health insurance costs to go down. A vote in favor of proceeding to this bill is a vote in favor of deep cuts to Medicare for tens of millions of seniors—seniors who depend on it totally. A vote to proceed to this bill is a vote to continue the completely out-of-control spending binge congress has been on all year. A vote in favor of this bill tells every American family sitting in a waiting room tonight, wondering when they’ll get to see a doctor or how much it’s going to cost, it’s not our concern. And worst of all, a vote in favor of this bill is a vote in favor of the spending binge that’s leading to a massive and unsustainable long-term debt that will shackle our children to a future they can’t afford.

“That’s what tonight’s vote is all about. If it wasn’t, none of us would be here on a Saturday night with the nation watching and waiting to see what we do here. They’re watching because they know that none of this—none of this is inevitable. All it takes is one vote, just one. The simple math is this, if there were one Democrat, just one of our friends on the other side of the aisle—just one who would say no tonight, none of this would happen.

“The voices of the American people would be heard. We’ve seen all the surveys. We know how they feel. If just one Democrat were to say no tonight, he’d be saying no to the premium increases, no to the tax cuts, no to the Medicare cuts. Just one on the other side of the aisle. And then we could start over with a common-sense step-by-step approach to fix the problem that got us here in the first place, and that was that health care costs too much.

“Now, Mr. President, the sad irony of this whole debate, the problem that got us here is that health care costs are out of control. And, yet, the neutral nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the score keeper around here, says that under this bill—this massive bill health care costs are actually going to go up, not down. And the American people thought that’s what this whole debate was about in the first place.

“So 2,074 pages and trillions of dollars later—2,074 pages, and trillions of dollars later, this bill doesn’t even meet the basic goal that the American people had in mind and what they thought this debate was all about to lower costs. This bill will actually make the situation worse. And now we’re about to vote on it. Now we’ve heard some senators come to the floor today and say that they oppose this bill, but they don’t want to stop the debate. They oppose the bill, but they don’t want to stop the debate.

“Mr. President, nobody is suggesting we stop the debate. No one. Not a single senator on this side of the aisle have I heard suggest that we stop the debate. But if we don’t stop this bill tonight, the only debate we’ll be having—the only debate we’ll be having is about higher premiums, not savings for the American people, higher taxes instead of lower costs, and cuts to Medicare rather than improving seniors care. That’s what the debate will be about. Now the American people, and 40 of us in this room sitting on this side of the aisle, are not asking to end the debate. That’s not what we have in mind, to end the debate. What we want to do is change the debate, not end it. Change it. Because once we get on this bill, the basic dimensions will not change. The basic dimensions will not change.

“So I ask: why should we consider a bill we already know the American people oppose? This is not anything anybody’s in doubt about. The American people think, if you don’t like this bill, you’ve got an obligation to try to stop it. And that opportunity will come at 8:00.

“Now, I’m sure this won’t come as a surprise to any member of the Senate, but it’s going to take 60 votes to change this bill. That means the bill is introduced, this thing we’re looking at right here, will fundamentally be the bill we’ll be asked to pass sometime in the future. That is a fact.

“Now, after tonight’s vote we’ll all go home and face our constituents. We’ll have to tell them how we voted on raising their premiums, raising their taxes, and cutting their Medicare. For some of us, that’s not going to be a very easy conversation. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

“If you really want to lower costs and premiums, then we can work together step by step and pass the commonsense reforms the American people have been asking for all along. We can end junk lawsuits against doctors and hospitals which drive up costs. We can encourage healthy choices like prevention and wellness programs which hold down costs. We can lower costs by letting consumers buy coverage across state lines. We can allow small businesses to band together to get lower insurance rates. And, certainly, we can address the rampant – absolutely rampant – waste, fraud and abuse that drive up costs. All of these are changes worth making.

“The American people are looking at the Senate tonight. They’re hoping we say ‘no’ to this bill so we can start on a better plan that fixes the problem that the American people care about most, and that is cost.

“They want us to start over.

“There’s nothing about this massive bill that they like. They want us to start over. They want us to address their real concerns. All it would take is just one member of the other side of the aisle – just one – to give us an opportunity, not to end the debate, but to change the debate in the direction the American people would like us to go.”

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