McConnell: Start over on healthcare

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- Republicans will have "won" the healthcare debate not by stopping it, but by "starting over," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday.

The Kentucky Republican, appearing on the CNN program "State of the Nation," said that his caucus' definition of "winning" the debate isn't preserving the status quo as critics of the GOP say, but instead is "stopping and starting over and getting it right."

Asserting that Democrats in Congress and the White House want to "take over almost 20 percent of our economy, our healthcare," McConnell said, "I don't know anybody in my Republican conference in the Senate who's in favor of doing nothing on healthcare. We obviously have a cost problem and we have an access problem.

"But there's a very big difference about whether or not it's appropriate to have a major rewrite of about one-sixth of our economy in the process."

McConnell said he wants to avoid cuts to Medicare and new taxes "on small businesses and on individuals in the heart of a recession."