Tax Extenders Act of 2009--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. WICKER. Thank you, Madam President.

I come from a background of having earlier been in the State senate and then, after that, the U.S. House of Representatives. Sometimes when I was a State legislator and it looked as though we were making a hash of legislation on the senate side, someone would say: Well, let's pass the bill anyway, and we will clean it up in conference. It was always tempting to send it to conference and hope that cooler heads would prevail and we would get a better work product. Sometimes that happened and worked out well, and sometimes it turned out that we didn't clean it up in conference.

I am reminded of that when I hear about what is being discussed and what now seems to be the clear plan for this Democratic majority and President Obama in moving forward with health care legislation. The House has passed a flawed bill with $ 1/2 trillion in cuts to Medicare, with huge mandates to the States, with tax increases--the largest increase, really, in entitlement big government, in my memory--and the Senate has passed its flawed version not only with those flaws I just mentioned in the House version but also special deals: a special deal for Nebraska, a special deal for Florida and Louisiana, and on and on and on. That is where we are now.

The plan now seems to be that this mistaken bill--the flawed bill the Senate passed on Christmas Eve--is now at the desk at the House of Representatives, and leadership over there is tempted to take that flawed product, pass it without any changes whatsoever, and send it to the President for his signature. The plan there is not the old legislative trick of we will clean it up in conference; the plan is we will clean it up in reconciliation.

As I mentioned, sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. The problem with cleaning it up in reconciliation is that if this Democratic scheme goes forward and we do that, we will not only have a bill in conference to be worked out where if a mistake is made we can vote against it in the end, we will have a statute.

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 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. Certainly, it will be the key, top, paramount election issue for the next several months.

If the plan works, if the Democratic scheme works, we will still have this. Maybe the ``Louisiana purchase'' will be taken out, the ``Cornhusker kickback,'' the ``Gator Aid''--all of the special deals, and then we will have the President's additional taxes and additional Federal regulation that he has recently proposed. So when it is all said and done, even at their best, most optimistic predictions, we will have massive funding mandates to the States. We will have a $ 1/2 trillion cut to Medicare. We will have huge tax increases and a large new entitlement program.

The people don't want this. I heard a Democratic Member of the House of Representatives very articulately stating this on television just this morning. He said people must be out of their minds. This is wrong, according to this Member of the House of Representatives, a Democrat who says he has voted against it before, and he is not going to be one of those who is willing to change his mind.

So I don't want to spend the rest of this year with this flawed legislation as the only campaign issue. It may be our only choice. But I can assure everyone within the sound of my voice of this: If this scheme goes through, if the flawed Senate version is signed into law and we have this reconciliation debate, this will be the No. 1 issue, if not the only issue, and there will be devastation for my friends on the other side of the aisle if they persist in thumbing their noses at the American people and defying the clear will of the American people on this issue.

I am glad to be joined by my friend, Senator Barrasso, a legislator in his own right with considerable experience, and a physician. So I am happy to hear the comments of my colleague from Wyoming.

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Mr. WICKER. Madam President, I think Senator LeMieux and I agree on this point. We owe a debt of gratitude to our colleagues, our two physicians, for making it clear on national television over the course of 7 1/2 hours last week that Republicans have positive ideas, ideas that will work and, frankly, ideas the American people believe in.

I am astonished that after we had such a clear demonstration of ideas not only that are popular, but ideas that need to be given a chance to work, the whole thrust of that 7 1/2 -hour discussion has been cast aside, and we are back at this proposal of passing the flawed bill with all of the mistakes that people on the other side of the aisle agree we have made and signing it into law before we do anything else.

I have some comments I want to make about what Senator Coburn called ``shenanigans,'' the reconciliation process.

Let me 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 Senate about the concept of cramming this bill through and this procedure I have described and coming back with reconciliation. It is not simply a Republican objection. It is an objection where we have our Democratic colleagues on record.

I hope they will recall their words. I hope there is not some pressure that is going to be issued against my colleagues in the House and in the Senate to do something they do not believe in simply because someone in the White House wants it and is exerting pressure.

The comments I have read were all made by Democrats. I happen to agree with them. We have never under reconciliation attempted something of this magnitude and this substance. It would forever change the legislative process in the House and Senate of the United States if we begin with health care.

I will be happy to yield.

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