Michael Burgess: “I thank the gentleman for participating this evening. It means a lot to me individually that he was willing to come up…”

“I thank the gentleman for participating this evening. It means a lot to me individually that he was willing to come up and stay up late with us tonight yet one more night dealing with the Affordable Care Act. But the gentleman is quite direct. The journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. It is a three-part program. This was the first part, the first phase that will happen on Thursday night. This deals with some of the more egregious aspects of the Affordable Care Act, those things that can be tackled through Senate rules of reconciliation that only require 51 Senators to get passed. So that is one part of this. Another part is the administrative part. And our former colleague from Georgia, Tom Price, a physician, who is now Secretary Tom Price for the Department of Health and Human Services, he has an administrative part that is actually already underway. We don't have to wait for that to happen. It is already occurring. Then there is the third part, the so-called regular order part, the part that will require 60 votes on the Senate side, the part that is, by its very nature, going to be bipartisan. We have reported two rules out of the Committee on Rules tonight, one on the McCarran-Ferguson changes that I think the gentleman is well aware of. There are already additional bills that will be coming to the floor of the House that are separate and apart from this reconciliation bill, which is just the first step in repealing the Affordable Care Act.…”