Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed to end Congressional gridlock if Republicans re-take the Senate during the Republican Party’s Weekly Address on Saturday.
Transcript via ABC News Radio as follows:
“Hello, I’m Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky.
The promise of every generation is to leave a better country to the one that follows.
Through war and strife, we’ve long kept that charge. It’s one of the most remarkable things about our country.
And yet, this long-standing commitment has never seemed more under threat.
Millions of our neighbors remain out of work. Those who do have jobs worry constantly about the future.
Costs always seem to go up, but wages and opportunities never seem to keep pace. Even the President admits that wages and incomes have been stagnant during his time in the White House.
Working moms and dads can find it almost impossible to balance the demands of work with the needs of a family.
And events seem to keep spinning out of control, whether at home or abroad, with no one in the Administration possessing a real handle on what to do next.
In difficult times, the American people expect real leadership from Washington. What they don’t need are more unworkable ideas that often make the problem worse.
…they don’t need a health law that cancels policies and too often makes health care even less affordable for you and your family…
…they don’t need a failed ‘stimulus’ that plunged us a trillion dollars deeper into debt…
…and they don’t need an ideological War on Coal that threatens not to meaningfully improve the environment, but rather to increase the squeeze on middle-class families and struggling miners.
It’s no wonder that nearly 7 in 10 Americans believe our country is headed seriously off track, or that so many in the middle class see a government in Washington that works for itself, and not for them.
The fact is, President Obama and his Democratic Party have held power in Washington for almost six years now. And for a long time they were able to enact nearly anything they wanted.
Obamacare. The stimulus. Higher taxes. More complex regulations. Record levels of debt.
They got the chance to pass nearly everything their ideology would allow. But six years on, their policies haven’t gotten the country moving again. And it’s clear that more of the same isn’t going to work. This unfortunate reality has caused Democrats to abandon trying to fix the economy in order to focus almost exclusively on protecting their control of Congress – seemingly at any cost.
That’s why the Democratic majority blocks nearly every common-sense idea – including reforms and jobs bills that enjoy significant, sometimes overwhelming, bipartisan support – they block it from even coming to a vote. Their aim is to protect the President from having to make politically difficult decisions about whether to sign or veto bipartisan legislation – legislation that might excite one segment of the Democratic Party but infuriate another.
Well, we think it’s time for the President to start doing the job he was elected to do.
He should worry less about massaging egos in his party and worry more about healing our country.
And if the American people choose to send a Republican majority to Congress this election, we can finally help ensure that he does.
A new Republican majority wouldn’t mean we’d be able to get everything you want from Washington. But it would mean we’d be able to bring the current legislative gridlock to a merciful end. It means we’d be able to start sending bills to the President’s desk again, just as the American people expect.
Under a new majority, our focus would be on passing legislation that improves the economy, that makes it easier for Americans to find jobs, and that helps restore Americans’ confidence in their country and their government.
We want to ease the squeeze on working families. We want to improve economic opportunity. We want to make it easier for families to join the Middle Class. We want to increase career prospects for college graduates.
A new Republican majority would work toward ensuring those kinds of policies start getting a vote instead of succumbing to the current gridlock. If our friends on the other side have a common-sense idea, we want to hear that as well.
We’re aiming for common-sense solutions, not large or complex bills no one reads and few understand. We want to engage members from both parties in the legislative process, to get our democracy working again the way it was designed.
Already there are bills everyone knows would pass Congress with bipartisan support, if only a vote were allowed. That’s why Democrats haven’t allowed those votes to happen. But we will.
There are other good policies that might not pass with as broad a majority, but that still deserve Congress’ attention. We’ll fight for those as well.
I think we’ll be able to work with the President to ensure solid, pro-middle class ideas are signed into law.
He may also veto some of what we pass.
But that’s okay. We believe it’s better to let the representatives of the people have their say and vote, even if the President disagrees with the policy. That’s far preferable to the Democratic majority’s policy of blocking bills from both sides of the aisle and shutting down debate.
Our view is that Congress shouldn’t be in the business of protecting the President from good ideas. We think Congress should be in the business of getting good ideas to his desk instead – ideas that can help ensure the next generation enjoys just as many opportunities as we have had.
That’s our charge. And that’s our focus. Thank you.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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