With Secretive Healthcare Process, Leader McConnell is Breaking his Own Promises on How He’d Run the Senate

Washington, D.C. – In a newly released video, Senate Democrats call out Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans for breaking their commitments to the American people in their attempt to force through the partisan Trumpcare bill. In 2014, Sen. McConnell told the American people that if Republicans were given the majority in the Senate, they would restore the committee process and respect bipartisan input. But in 2017, Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans have written their Trumpcare bill behind closed doors and without bipartisan input. On Tuesday, McConnell made it clear that Democrats are not even welcome in health care planning sessions and that he considers the hearings he once promised a waste of time. This is not just an abuse of process and clear hypocrisy – it is yet another broken promise to take away healthcare from millions of Americans.

The video can be viewed by clicking here.

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2014 MCCONNELL: REPEATEDLY PROMISED TO “REINVIGORATE THE COMMITTEES AND RESTORE…REGULAR ORDER”

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “The committee process today in the United States Senate is a shadow of what it used to be, thereby marginalizing, reducing the influence of every single member of the Senate on both sides of the aisle. Major legislation is now routinely drafted not in committee but in the Majority Leader’s conference room and then dropped on the floor with little or no opportunity for members to participate in the amendment process, virtually guaranteeing a fight. Now there’s a lot of empty talk around here about the corrosive influence of partisanship. Well, if you really want to do something about it, you should support a more robust committee process.  That’s the best way to end the permanent sort of shirts against skins contest the Senate has become. Bills should go through committee. And if Republicans are fortunate enough, Republicans are fortunate enough, to gain the majority next year, that will be done.” [Floor Remarks, 1/8/14]

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “And that will always be the case if you approach legislation without regard for the views of the other side. Without some meaningful buy-in, you guarantee a food fight. You guarantee instability and you guarantee strife. It may very well have been the case that on Obamacare, the will of the country was not to pass the bill at all. That’s what I would have concluded if Republicans couldn’t get a single Democratic vote for legislation of that magnitude. I’d have thought, well maybe this isn’t such a great idea.” [Floor Remarks, 1/8/14]

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “I guarantee you these are things that can and will change because one person can change most of the problems in the Senate and that’s whoever the majority leader is, the person who gets to set the agenda has the right of prior recognition and has the opportunity to decide whether you’re going to apply a gag rule to everybody or whether you’re going to use tactics that create a greater level of comity and, of course, get more results.” [Speech at American Enterprise Institute, 5/22/14]

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “So this is correctible. You know, it doesn’t require any rules changes. It’s a behavioral issue. It can change and I will change it if the American people give me the opportunity to. Now, look, the greatest way to ensure transparency is to do exactly what I said: reinvigorate the committees and restore what we used to call the regular order. The greatest way to ensure stability in our laws is to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to participate in some way in the passage. So I think there’s no question that a Republican Senate would be far more – a far more hospitable place for the consideration of the kind of creative policy proposals that you’ve all been writing and thinking about.” [Speech at American Enterprise Institute, 5/22/14]

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “He has opted for secrecy over transparency by moving the bill-writing process from the Senate floor into his conference room, most notoriously, of course, we all recall, in the drafting of ‘Obamacare.’ And I don’t need to tell any of you what he has done to the spirit of comity and respect that the public has every right to expect from their leaders. If Republicans were fortunate enough to reclaim the Majority in November, I assure you, my friends, all of this would change. A Senate majority under my leadership would break sharply from the practices of the Reid era in favor of a far more free-wheeling approach to problem solving. I would work to restore its traditional role as a place where good ideas are generated, debated and voted upon. We’d fire up the committee process. And, by the way, when I say that, I mean Democratic ideas, too. I don’t know what they’re afraid of.” [Speech at American Enterprise Institute, 5/22/14]

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “But after castigating Senator Reid for crowding out the rest of us and shielding his actions from public view, I assure you, we’re not going to turn around and do the same thing. There’s not a chance that we’re going to turn around and do the same thing.” [Speech at American Enterprise Institute, 5/22/14]

2017 MCCONNELL: “NO TRANSPARENCY WOULD HAVE BEEN ADDED BY HAVING HEARINGS”

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY):

QUESTION: So are they invited into your planning sessions?

MCCONNELL: Into the Republican conference? NO!  [Press Conference, 6/20/17]

Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “I think this will be about as transparent as it could be. No transparency would have been added by having hearings in which Democrats offered endless single payer system amendments. That is not what this Republican Senate was sent here to do. [Press Conference, 6/20/17]

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