Marathon Pundit: McConnell: "The health care debate is now officially underway"

A few minutes ago, 60 Senate Democrats--but no Republicans--voted to proceed with debate on the Harry Reid health care bill.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued the following statement:

The health care debate is now officially underway on this 2,074 page, multi-trillion-dollar health care experiment.

This bill may have been drafted behind closed doors but now it's the American people's turn to have their voices heard. For months, they have been asking Congress to do something about the high cost of healthcare and yet the sponsors of this bill responded with a half-trillion dollars in Medicare cuts, massive tax hikes, and an unsustainable expansion of new government programs which Congress's non-partisan scorekeeper says will result in higher premiums, not lower. It may be a lot of things, but it's sure not reform.

Republicans will now provide what the closed-door sessions did not. We will continue to offer the commonsense, step-by-step cost-saving reform that Americans really want.