Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor regarding the Senate Democrats changing the Senate rules in order to achieve their goals:

“I want to start out by saying that I think it was important for all of us to get back home and hear from our constituents over the past couple weeks. I talked with a lot of Kentuckians, and I can tell you there’s a lot of anxiety and frustration out there. Folks are frustrated and upset by what’s happening with their health care under Obamacare.

“And they’re outraged at the tactics and the outright deception that led to its passage.

“It’s now clear that the President knew perfectly well that a lot of folks wouldn’t be able to keep the plans they had and liked, despite the endless assurances to the contrary they heard from the President himself. Many are also now starting to realize that the talking points they heard about their premiums and keeping their doctors weren’t worth the paper they were written on either.

“And the response they’ve gotten from the White House in the face of all this is just as bad. In the face of all the hardship and disruption this law is causing for millions of Americans — the White House is defiant. In the face of all these things, the President is trying to convince people that somehow we’re the problem. According to the President, the problem isn’t the law. The problem is the people who are unhappy with it.

“Well, look, this is exactly the kind of thing folks are frustrated with — the idea that Washington knows best. So we’re going to keep fighting this fight. If anybody needed any proof that Big Government liberalism doesn’t work, they’ve gotten a clinic over the past two months. It’s clearer now than ever that we need to replace this law with common-sense, patient-centered reforms that will actually drive down costs and increase innovation.

“The idea that making our health care system more like the DMV will somehow improve the final product has now been thoroughly discredited. And a thousand presidential speeches won’t change that.

“But here’s the larger story: Obamacare isn’t an isolated case. It may be the most obvious example of this administration’s determination to advance its agenda by any means possible. But it’s one example of many.

The latest example was the administration’s complicity in the power grab we saw last month in the Senate.

“News reports suggest that a President who denounced this tactic when Republicans thought about it back in 2005 was actively lobbying for it ahead of the Majority Leader’s fateful decision to pull the trigger.

“So the President and the Majority Leader were for the protection of minority rights in the Senate until they were no longer in the minority. At that point, minority rights, the Rules of the Senate, and the principle of a meaningful check on the Executive became an inconvenience that stood in the way of their desire for more power.

“As I indicated last month, this was a pure power grab.

“If the majority party can’t be expected to follow the rules, there are no rules.

“So this was a grave mistake. And it was a grave betrayal of trust, since some of the main players had previously vowed they would never do it. But then they did — just as the President had vowed that if you liked your health care you could keep it. For the President and his enablers in Congress, the ends now clearly justify the means.

“And that’s a very dangerous place for us to be.

“So Republicans will continue to speak out against these offenses against our institutions and against the American people, who have a right to expect elected leaders to keep their commitments and respect the rules and our laws.

“The American people have given us divided government. The administration needs to accept it. They need to work with the government the people have given them, not the one they wish they had. They need to stop viewing the rules that govern the rest of us as mere suggestions to follow as they wish … while the American people are left to suffer the consequences.

“As I’ve indicated, we see the results of this mindset most powerfully with Obamacare — a law that this administration was determined to force through Congress by hook or by crook, regardless of what half-truths it had to repeat to get there; regardless of whichever senators it had to coax and cajole.
But the pattern didn’t end with the law’s passage. The administration has repeatedly invoked executive power to change whichever parts of the law prove inconvenient. Its friends begged for relief from the law, so they carved out special loopholes. Statutory deadlines became an irritation, so they waived them. ‘Incorrect promises’ made to sell the law became an embarrassment, so they changed entire sections on the fly.

“To many Washington Democrats, this is all fine — not because they necessarily want to circumvent the law, perhaps, but because they feel justified in doing so if that’s what it takes to enact their agenda.

“We’ve seen Democrats use this same approach with immigration policy, welfare reform, recess appointments.

“We’ve seen them use it to justify government-sanctioned harassment of entire groups of people over at the IRS.

“And two weeks ago, we saw Washington Democrats take this ends-justify-the-means approach to a whole new level entirely, by eliminating the right of the minority party to be heard in the Senate — something they themselves had warned against for years when they were in the minority …. something the Vice President called ‘a naked power grab’ when he was in the Senate.

“Washington Democrats changed our democracy irrevocably — they did something they basically promised they would never do — and to what end? To pack the courts with judges they expect will rubberstamp the President’s partisan agenda … to eliminate one of the last remaining obstacles standing between the President and the enactment of his agenda through executive fiat. In short, because they wanted power that the voters have denied them at the ballot box.

“So before we all vote this morning, I just want to make sure everybody understands what this vote is all about. Two weeks ago, the President and his Democrat allies defied two centuries of tradition, their own prior statements, and – in the case of some Democrat Leaders – their own public commitments about following the rules of the Senate.

“They did this for one reason: to advance an agenda the American people don’t want. It’s an agenda that runs straight through the D.C. Circuit — so now they’re putting their people in place, to quote one member of their leadership, ‘one way or another.’

“This vote isn’t about any one nominee. It’s not about Patricia Millett. It’s about an attitude on the Left that says the ends justify the means — whatever it takes. That’s why we’re here today. And that’s why I’ll be opposing this nomination.

“Washington Democrats unfortunately are focusing their energy on saying and doing anything to circumvent the representatives of the people. But ultimately, they are accountable to the American people.

“And the American people will have their say again soon – sooner than many of our colleagues might hope.”