{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=095385be-81ce-429f-be28-d63ae35e3c26", "Senate Democrats Try to Change the Subject Again", "2013-11-18", "2013", "2013-11", "Republican", "House", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Washington, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor\u00a0regarding Senate Democrats\u2019 effort to focus on D.C. Circuit Court nominations rather than the failings of Obamacare:\r\n\u201cAs I noted last week, despite the repeated promises of President Obama, millions of people are losing their health insurance\u2014health insurance they very much liked and were assured they could keep. It has been reported that so far, 3.5 million Americans have lost their health insurance under Obamacare. That includes over a quarter million people in Kentucky, a third of a million people in Florida, and almost a million people in California.\u00a0\r\n\u201cThis is a serious problem that the President and Congressional Democrats need to do something about.\u00a0 Unfortunately, they appear to be relying on half-measures and creative accounting, not real solutions.\u00a0\r\n\u201cFor example, we learned over the weekend that the Administration\u2019s goal is to have the website serve only 80% of users, which is probably why our Democratic colleagues want to spend 100% of their time discussing other subjects. Which brings us to the vote we will have today.\u00a0   \u00a0   \u201cFor the third time in this work period, the Majority will have the Senate vote on yet another nominee to the D.C. Circuit. This is not because that court needs more judges. It\u2019s the least busy court in the country.\r\n\u201cIn fact, it is far less busy now than it was when Senate Democrats pocket-filibustered President Bush\u2019s nominee to that court, Peter Keisler, for two years, and this is according to our Democratic colleagues\u2019 own standards.\u00a0\r\n\u201cOur colleagues are having the Senate spend time on this because doing so furthers their twin political goals. First, to quote a Member of the Democratic leadership, to \u2018fill up\u2019 that court because the President\u2019s agenda, according to an Administration ally, \u2018runs through the D.C. Circuit.\u2019\u00a0\r\n\u201cSecond, \u2018to divert as much attention as possible from the problem-plagued Obamacare rollout at this formative stage of the 2014 campaign,\u2019 according to published reports.\u00a0\r\n\u201cIn other words, rather than focusing on keeping their commitment to the American people, they are focusing on things that appeal to their base. Rather than change the law that is causing so many problems for so many, they want to change the subject.\r\n\u201cSo unfortunately, the Senate will not be voting on legislation to allow Americans to keep their health insurance if they like it, as they were promised again and again. Rather, we will be voting on another nominee to a court that doesn\u2019t have enough work to do.\u00a0\r\n\u201cThe Senate ought to be spending its time dealing with a real crisis, not a manufactured one. We ought to be dealing with an ill-conceived law that is causing millions of Americans to lose their health insurance.\r\n\u201cInstead, we will spend our time today on a political exercise designed to distract the American people from the mess that is Obamacare, rather than try to fix it.\r\n\u201cLast week, I also suggested that if our Democratic colleagues are going to ignore the fact that millions of people are losing their health insurance plans, they should at least be working with us to fill judicial emergencies that actually exist, rather than complaining about fake ones.\u00a0\r\n\u201cI noted that there are nominees on the Executive Calendar who would fill actual judicial emergencies, unlike any of the D.C. Circuit nominations.\u00a0\r\n\u201cSeveral of them, in fact, have been pending on the Calendar longer than the nomination on which we\u2019ll be voting today.\u00a0\r\n\u201cAnother week has gone by without any action by the Majority to fill these actual judicial emergencies. Rather than work with us to schedule votes on them in an orderly manner, as we have been doing, the Majority chose to leap-frog over them in order to concoct a crisis on the D.C. Circuit so it can distract Americans from the failings of Obamacare.\u00a0\u00a0\r\n\u201cUnfortunately, our friends appear to be more concerned with playing politics than with solving actual problems.\r\n\u201cSo like last week, I will vote no on this afternoon\u2019s political exercise. And as I said last week, I hope the Senate will focus on things the American people care about, rather than spend its time trying to distract them.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=095385be-81ce-429f-be28-d63ae35e3c26"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8320440538227558, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}