Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) is giving the Senate Republicans opening remarks.

– “We want you to succeed,” Mr. President.

– “We think we have a better idea.”

– Obamacare the “mother of all unfunded mandates”

– Bill is like “a car that can’t be recalled and fixed.”

– “If you’re waiting for Mitch McConnell to roll in here a wheelbarrow full of a 2,700-page comprehensive health-care bill, that’s not going to happen. . . . We don’t do comprehensive well. . . . That is the sort of thing that works in the classroom . . .” but not in reality.

– Six Republican ideas (tort reform, cross-state access, etc.)

– If we took every penny of insurance company profits away, it would pay for two days of health-care reform and leave 363 with costs too high.

– “It’s not appropriate” to use reconciliation to “regulate 17 percent of the economy.” Quotes Byrd, Tocqueville on the tyranny of the majority. Asks Obama to “renounce” reconciliation.

– “The only thing that will be bipartisan will be opposition to this bill.”

– “It will mean going step-by-step together to re-earn the trust of the American people, and we’d like to do that.”