Booker invokes Senate history, 'civic gospel' in healthcare fight

11:24 p.m.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) invoked the Senate's standing as the world's "greatest deliberative body" in urging Republicans to back down from their push to fast-track their effort to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

"This is a moment. It's a test. History will look back and see what this body did at this moment in history. I fear we're going to fail the test," Booker said from the Senate floor on Monday evening.

Booker added that the Affordable Care Act, despite GOP criticism, didn't get an "express train" during the Obama administration, but instead marked the second longest session in Senate history.

"This healthcare bill involved such debate and discussion and the nation participated," he said, citing multiple bipartisan hearings and amendments.

The New Jersey Democrat, considered a potential 2020 White House contender, also referenced the late Sen. Strom Thurmond's filibuster of the 1957 Civil Rights Act — which sets the record of the Senate's longest filibuster.

"It demonstrates what this body's rules have been about for a long time," Booker said, using the more-than 24-hour filibuster as an example of deliberative debate.

Booker added that Senate Republicans have "some of the smartest minds" in the country, and with the Senate's history, the current plan to pass a healthcare bill without a hearing and substantial debate "should be shocking to consciousness."

"In matters that made it possible for me to stand on the Senate floor like integration and civil rights there was a process, and somehow in the last three and a half years in the name of what? A vicious brand of partisanship? ...It is an insult to the history and the traditions of this body," Booker said. "There is honor on this place that isn't on TV."