[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23532-23533]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      HEALTH CARE WEEK XII, DAY 1

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the American people have made their 
voices heard in the health care debate. Their message is clear. They 
want reforms that bring down the staggering cost of health care and 
increase access, and they do not want insurers turning people away.
  In short, Americans are not happy with the status quo. But they are 
just as concerned, if not more so, with the alternatives that the White 
House and a handful of Democrats on Capitol Hill are pushing through 
Congress.
  Soon, the last of the five committees involved in this debate will 
finish its work. After that, a handful of Democratic Senators will get 
together in a closed conference room somewhere in the Capitol to hash 
out a final product. Their proceedings may be private, but based on 
their stated preferences we have got a good sense of the basics.
  We know that the bill they send to the Senate floor will cut seniors' 
Medicare by half a trillion dollars; we know that it will raise taxes 
on virtually everyone; we know it will limit the health care choices 
Americans now enjoy. And we know it will be a big government bonanza: a 
$1 trillion pricetag and 1,000 pages of indecipherable text.
  For the past 2 weeks, Americans have been focused on the Senate 
Finance Committee. The real focus should be on the conference room 
where the final bill will be decided. That is because it is in that 
room that the Democratic leadership from the White House and Congress 
will attempt to decide the fate of health care for everyone. Their 
deliberations will be secret. And there is only one direction these 
Senators plan to take this legislation, and that is to the left.
  We have seen what happens in these kinds of closed deliberations 
before. Over the summer, members of the HELP Committee discovered after 
a month-long markup that a wellness measure they had agreed to 
unanimously in front of the cameras in July was mysteriously taken out 
away from the cameras sometime after a final vote was taken on the 
bill.

[[Page 23533]]

  And we all remember how executives at AIG ended up with multimillion 
dollar bonuses after nearly driving the company off a cliff. Those 
bonuses were blessed in a closed-door meeting somewhere in the Capitol 
after a final vote on the stimulus bill had already taken place.
  This bill already starts out with a flawed foundation of Medicare 
cuts, more taxes, more debt, and fewer health care choices. That is 
reason enough for Americans to oppose it. Now the finishing touches 
will be added on in secret before a rush to the finish.
  Proponents of the administration's health care plan have been working 
hard over the past 2 weeks to convince the American people their 
concerns are being heard. We will see if that has just been window 
dressing. The fact is, the final bill will be worked out, out of sight, 
by a mere few whose decisions will affect everyone in America. Away 
from the cameras, they will make decisions that affect every single 
American and one-sixth of our entire economy.
  Americans want commonsense reform. Reshaping the entire economy, 
limiting their choices, expanding government control over health care, 
cutting Medicare, and raising taxes in the middle of the worst economy 
in memory, and then pushing it through with as little public scrutiny 
as possible is not what they would call reform.

                          ____________________