Arlen Specter: “when the Senator from Illinois talks about doing it in an honest way--we have done that. We have been honest. When he…”

“when the Senator from Illinois talks about doing it in an honest way--we have done that. We have been honest. When he talks about, if we make a mistake, there will be a lot of human suffering, there is a lot of human suffering right now. It would be hard to structure a substitute system which would have more human suffering than you have now. We are looking at a system which is totally debilitating and decimating, with the courts clogged and with thousands of people suffering from deadly diseases and not being compensated. When the Senator from Illinois makes a reference to saluting me for trying, I appreciate salutes of any kind, but I am looking to the possibility of a salute for succeeding. I don't know how this debate is going to turn out or what is going to happen in the final vote. But I do know that for more than 3 decades, nobody has been able to bring a bill to the floor and nobody has been able to move past a determined effort by the minority to block this bill with a filibuster. When that effort failed late in the afternoon on Tuesday, they wanted to withdraw the motion, and we defeated it very soundly. The Senator from Illinois says I have undertaken a Herculean assignment. It is a Herculean problem. I wish Hercules was around to handle it. I would be glad to defer to Hercules were he here. When the Senator from Illinois refers to cutting payments, that does not happen unless the Congress agrees.…”