Don Nickles: “The point I am making: It would be nice to go through the process, have a bipartisan markup, have hearings, have…”

“The point I am making: It would be nice to go through the process, have a bipartisan markup, have hearings, have experts, and not be relying on e-mails that came from somebody in CBO. Incidentally, I noticed in CBO's scoring of the proposal, it was scored and was estimated to be $394 billion, but there is an asterisk: Scoring done by estimates, not by the language of the bill. In other words, they did not have the language of the bill on which to do the scoring. This is the most important expensive expansion of an entitlement that we have dealt with in decades. It is the most expensive important expansion of any entitlement, and we are doing it with CBO not even having legislative language to look at. I find that to be a pretty crummy way to legislate. I am offended by this process. I am offended by being a member of the Finance Committee and not even being able to offer an amendment in the markup of the bill. I am offended by the fact--I looked at the history of the Finance Committee, which is one of the great committees of the Senate. I waited 16 years to get on that committee. It took a long time. It is a great committee. I thought it would be worth the wait because we would be marking up very substantive legislation, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare reform, and taxes. Yet the committee is bypassed, so we have 20 members of the committee who did not get a chance to offer an amendment.”