Lamar Alexander: 'Most Brazen Act of Political Arrogance Since Watergate'

On Face the Nation, Sen. Lamar Alexander called the Democrats' plan to have the House "fix" the Senate health care reform bill without ever voting on it as the "most brazen act of political arrogance that [he] can remember since the Watergate years."

The arrogance is stunning.

The plan is unconstitutional.



Transcript

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, you have said on the record that Republicans will challenge every sentence in this bill. What does that mean? Does that mean you’ll try to throw up procedural road blocks? Will you offer amendments? Exactly, what-- let’s say that the House does pass this and it does come back to the Senate, what happens then?

SENATOR LAMAR ALEXANDER: Well, here-- here’s what the House Democrats are being asked to do. They’re-- they’re being asked by the President to hold hands, jump off a cliff, and hope Harry Reid catches them in the Senate after the bill is law. All forty-one Republican senators have agreed that we’re going to enforce the rules of the Senate, which means, for example, that the only things they can change have to do with taxing and budget. So they try to change abortion. That won’t work. And we’re going to go sentence by sentence through the three-thousand-page bill to make sure the rules are followed. That’s what the American people would expect us to do.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, and you-- you will not be able to filibuster those things that come under the so-called reconciliation package, which is the package of-- of-- of legislation that supposedly will correct the bill that-- that had passed the Senate earlier. So would you try to, as some say, try to filibuster by amendment, will you offer an endless number of amendments?

SENATOR LAMAR ALEXANDER: Well, we’ll certainly offer a large number of amendments to try to correct the bill. But-- but just think about this for a minute. Here-- here through elections, through town meetings, through consistent public opinion surveys, Americans have said don’t pass this bill. And this is the most brazen act of political arrogance that-- that I can remember since the Watergate years. Not in terms of breaking the law, but in terms of thumbing your nose at the American people and say we know you don’t want it, but we’re going to give it to you anyway. So, I hope what the House Democrats decide is, we don’t want to do that. We don’t want a year like 1974, when people came down out of the mountains in Tennessee looking for Republicans so they’d know who to vote against. We want to work with the Republicans and try to let people buy insurance across state lines, do the other things we suggested at the health care summit, and reduce health care costs.