today is really a concern for all of us who prefer to get health care reform done right and preparing for reconciliation is another clear sign that democrats have decided to go it alone on health care and will not listen to the concerns millions of americans have expressed about this legislation and i and my republican colleagues have reached out to the president to the leadership of the democrat party the speaker majority leader and to our counterparts to try to find common ground for bipartisanship on health care other than one white house photo op at the start of the year and one closed door meeting of this committee the results have been less than encouraging not one republican amendment was adopted none of the thirty we voted on during the committee's markup of two hundred and while disappointing to the detriment of the american people republicans remain determined in our effort to make health care reform a bipartisan effort i know some may not have liked what they heard during the august recess in the weeks merican people have spoken up often loudly about their concerns with the bill approved by the committee concerned about the trillion dollars worth of spending in the bill they're concerned about the half trillion dollars in new taxes contained in the bill they're worried about the increase in the deficit as a result of this legislation and they fear it will cause their premiums to go up and millions of americans to lose their current health care plan breaking the president's promise that if you like what you have you can keep it there deeply troubled by the prospect of some bureaucrat in washington getting between patients and doctors are particularly concerned about the benefit cuts up to fifty percent of the added medicare benefit more than ten million from their medicare plan as their representatives it's incumbent upon us to respond to our constituents we've also learned much from the ongoing debate in the senate and received new information from the congressional budget office and other experts in light of these new facts we believe is our obligation to again try to thirty two hundred which we can do by amending the letter before us it may not be the ordinary path but i trust the chair motor agree that no ordinary times and this is no ordinary issue and passing up this opportunity and simply rushing this letter out the door would be a dereliction of our duty today will offer a handful of amendments based on this new information and responding to the concerns heard most loudly around the country during the august recess and at solving some but not all of the most troubling aspects of a hundred it is our hope that this time around there will be broad bipartisan support for these amendments after all this is the only committee on capitol hill of the five committees that considered health care legislation that did not accept one single republican amendment so with that i yield back to  that we have an opportunity to discuss some of these matters and put them up for a vote we think it's fundamental fairness we know there are lots of meetings going on behind closed doors that every republicans excluded from even olympia  chairman if if i just might i want to correct something we have at least forty bills introduced by republicans on health care some of them comprehensive i do want to correct for the record the comment that there is no would just say in the strongest possible terms i can say that i think this is not good for the committee this is not good for the relationships between the two parties we had a one day markup on probably the most important bil committee has faced since i've been in congress i don't think that was an inordinate amount of time and so i think to give us an opportunity to discuss these issues in this forum to not give us that chance is i think really