WASHINGTON – In remarks today on the Senate floor, U.S. Senator Roger Wicker spoke out against Democrats’ plans to use “reconciliation,” a procedural tactic typically reserved for budget or noncontroversial measures, to pass the 2,700-page health care bill on a party-line vote. Passing health care under reconciliation would only take 51 votes in the Senate, rather than the 60 votes that are typically needed.

Watch highlights of Sen. Wicker’s floor speech by clicking here.

Read excerpts of Sen. Wicker’s remarks:

•  “The plan is for the President to sign this flawed Senate product – with all the taxes, with all the mandates, with all the special deals and purchases – sign it into law and then hope that the Senate can correct all of those mistakes in reconciliation. If that scheme fails, we will be stuck with a very bad product, and it will be the law of the land and up to some future Congress to deal with.”

• “When it's all said and done, even at their best, most optimistic predictions, we'll have massive funding mandates to the states. We'll have a one half trillion dollar cut to Medicare, we'll have huge tax increases and a large new entitlement program. The people don't want this.”

• “We owe a great debt of gratitude to our colleagues, to our two physicians, for making it clear [at the health summit] on national television over the course of seven and a half hours last week that Republicans have positive ideas, ideas that will work and frankly ideas that the American people believe in.”

• “Now, let me just say this: ‘never intended for this purpose,’ ‘an outrage,’ ‘a nonstarter,’ ‘I will not accept it,’ ‘ill-advised,’ ‘a real mistake,’ ‘not appropriate,’ ‘undesirable.’ Those are all comments of Democratic members of the United States Senate about the concept of cramming this bill through in this procedure that I've described and then coming back with reconciliation. It's not simply a Republican objection. It's an objection where we have our Democratic colleagues on record. I hope they will recall their words.”

• “We have never, under reconciliation, attempted something of this magnitude and this substance. And it would forever change the legislative process in the House and Senate of the United States if we begin with health care.”
 
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