ThinkProgress Home
ThinkProgress
ThinkProgress Logo

Stories tagged with “Mitch McConnell”

Justice

Video: Republicans Pretend There’s No Such Thing As The Filibuster

By Jeff Spross and Ian Millhiser on Feb 13, 2012 at 4:00 pm

At this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) suggested that everything that went wrong during the first two years of President Obama’s term must be laid at his feet because Obama “got everything he wanted” from Congress while both houses were controlled by Democrats. As a new ThinkProgress video demonstrates, this exact phrase has clearly become the centerpiece of the GOP’s messaging this election cycle. Watch it:

As the video also reminds these Republicans, however, there’s one giant problem with their talking point — the Senate GOP’s unprecedented abuse of the filibuster. Indeed, the number of votes attempting to break Sen. McConnell’s use of this tactic more than doubled the minute he took over as minority leader:

Alyssa

At CPAC, Mitch McConnell Calls Conservatives ‘Simply More Fun Than Liberals’

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Feb 9, 2012 at 12:30 pm

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has an interesting new recruiting strategy for conservatives. “Conservatives are more simply more fun than liberals, and there is a reason for that,” he told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference this morning. “We’re always right.” Watch it:

Speaking in 2009 to CPAC, McConnell made the same argument, commenting, “Who wants to hang out with guys like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich when you can be with Rush Limbaugh?”

My plans for a rockin’ time out don’t generally include hanging out with my friends in conference rooms getting all self-congratulatory about our stances on policy, but to each his own. If McConnell wants to rebrand conservatism as America’s most entertaining ideological movement, he’s probably going to have to come up with a better reason people should believe him.

Health

With War On Contraception, GOP Lawmakers Seek To Deny Coverage To Others That They Enjoy

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Feb 8, 2012 at 1:34 pm

Republican congressional leaders are entering the fray over the Obama administration’s weeks-old decision to require employer-provided health insurance to cover contraception, including for some religious organizations that don’t employ a majority of people of that faith. The decision has been a hot topic on the campaign trail in recent days, but today, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) took the House floor to slam it, calling it an “unambiguous attack on religious freedom in our country” and vowed to repeal the regulation. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had a similarly sharp indictment yesterday. Watch it:

But missed in this debate is the fact Boehner and McConnell’s own health insurance plans covers contraception, something they now want to deny to others.

Since 1998, every insurer participating in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program (FEHBP) — including members of Congress — has had access to comprehensive contraceptive coverage, including emergency contraception, such as the morning after pill. Republican lawmakers now want to prevent access to the coverage they enjoy to employees of religious organizations who may not be of that religion or who disagree with anti-contraception doctrine (89 percent of Catholics say contraception decision should be theirs, not the church’s).

Economy

Warren Buffett Challenges Republicans To Put Their Money Where Their Mouth Is On Deficit Reduction

By Marie Diamond on Jan 11, 2012 at 5:45 pm

Billionaire investor Warren Buffet is telling congressional Republicans it’s time to put up or shut up on deficit reduction.

For the past year, Republicans have doggedly insisted that the nation’s deficit is a crisis that eclipses high unemployment. But they’ve only been willing to reduce the deficit through drastic spending cuts — and have denounced Buffett for saying tax increases on the rich need to be part of the solution.

Last fall, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that if Buffett was feeling “guilty” about paying too little in taxes, he should “send in a check to the Treasury. Now, Buffet says he’s willing to do just that to pay down the national debt — if Republicans will do their part too:

The billionaire investor, in the new issue of Time magazine, says he will donate $1 to paying down the national debt for every dollar donated by a Republican in Congress. The only exception is Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell – for whom Buffett said he would go $3-to-$1.

The idea stems from a New York Times opinion piece Buffett wrote last August in which he said the rich ought to pay more taxes. It sparked an instant controversy, with some Washington conservatives calling on the 81-year-old “Oracle of Omaha” to voluntarily pay extra.

“It restores my faith in human nature to think that there are people who have been around Washington all this time and are not yet so cynical as to think that can’t be solved by voluntary contributions,” the Berkshire Hathaway CEO told Time…

McConnell certainly has the resources to meet Buffett’s challenge — he’s worth at least $10 million. Buffett went on to say that the U.S. needs a system that “takes very good care” of citizens who work hard but don’t happen to make millions in the financial sector.

NEWS FLASH

Senate Confirmations Are 18 Percentage Points Lower Now Then They Were Under Bush & A Democratic Senate | For the last two years of his presidency, when George W. Bush faced a Senate controlled by the opposite party, 740 of his 981 civilian nominees were confirmed, a success rate of 75 percent. During the current Congress, however, Senate Minority Leader has waged such a sweeping campaign of obstructionism against President Obama’s nominees that only 57 percent of the president’s civilian nominees have been confirmed — despite the fact that Obama’s own party ostensibly controls the Senate.

Justice

President Obama Still Has All The Legal Authority He Needs To Make A Recess Appointment Right Now

By Ian Millhiser on Jan 3, 2012 at 2:10 pm

Earlier today, a reliable source told ThinkProgress that President Obama will make at least one recess appointment soon. If this report proves accurate, Senate Republicans will inevitably complain that this action violates the Constitution — as they do pretty much every time President Obama does anything. They will be wrong.

Although recess appointments that occur while the Senate is at least pretending to conduct business every three days are rare, they are rare for a very simple reason. Few people in American history have done more to obstruct American governance than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and his fellow Senate Republicans. As such, it has rarely been necessary for a president to use his constitutionally granted authority to appoint officials during a very short recess.

There are no modern precedents for McConnell-style mass obstructionism, and there is no Supreme Court decision considering how long senators must be out of Washington before recess appointments are allowed. There was, however, a showdown during the Bush Administration over President Bush’s decision to recess appoint Judge William Pryor to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. In Evans v. Stephens, that court considered whether Pryor’s appointment was invalid because it occurred during a very short legislative break. This court is the highest legal authority ever to weigh in on the question of whether a break in the Senate’s calendar must last a certain number of days before a recess occurs, and it answered that question with an unambiguous “no”:

The Constitution, on its face, does not establish a minimum time that an authorized break in the Senate must last to give legal force to the President’s appointment power under the Recess Appointments Clause. And we do not set the limit today.

There are a number of well-established precedents demonstrating the president’s authority to make recess appointments during very brief recesses. In 1903, when the first session of the 58th Congress ended, President Theodore Roosevelt made over 160 recess appointments during a recess that lasted only a fraction of a day. Similarly, President Truman twice made recess appointments during recesses that lasted just a handful of days.

Read more

Economy

House To Pass Payroll Tax Cut Extension Today (Update)

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Dec 23, 2011 at 9:45 am

The House is expected to pass the two-month payroll tax cut extension today, preventing taxes from increasing for millions of Americans on Jan. 1. The Senate approved the deal Friday morning. House Speaker John Boehner caved under the enormous pressure and dropped his opposition to the extension, telling reporters late Thursday that the House had reached a deal to pass the Senate’s two-month extension deal after minor modifications, according to the Washington Post:

The agreement resolved the last stalemate in a year of bitter congressional fighting that earned lawmakers their lowest approval ratings in recent memory.

In exchange for supporting the 60-day patch, Republicans secured minor face-saving concessions from Senate leaders, who had already passed a two-month deal on an overwhelming vote of 89 to 10. Senate leaders had balked at the House’s demand to restart talks over the holidays on a full-year extension of the tax cut.

The Senate agreed to make a technical change to the payroll tax reporting requirements, designed to lessen the burden on small businesses of implementing the two-month deal.

And Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) promised he would appoint a conference committee to take up negotiations after New Year’s Day on ways to pay for a full-year tax cut.

Both chambers will pass the plan by unanimous consent so long as no member shows up to voice opposition in person, which lets the deal pass even though most members have gone home. There was no opposition to the deal in the Senate Friday morning. The two-month extension gives House and Senate leaders time to negotiate for a yearlong extension after the holiday recess. “I am grateful that the voices of reason have prevailed,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said in a statement.

But so far, a few House freshmen have threatened to stop the deal. Freshman Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) said he was “not yet sure” if he would protest the deal, and Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) told CNN’s John King Thursday night, “I’m not so sure I’m not going to do that,” when asked if he’d drive to Washington, D.C. to stop the deal.

Boehner acknowledged the pressure he has felt, telling reporters Thursday that “I talked to enough members over the last 24 hours who say we don’t like the two-month extension and if you can get this fixed, why not do the right thing for the American people even if it’s not exactly what we want.”

Boehner received pressure from his own party — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called on the House to pass the two month extension yesterday — as well as the public. After the White House asked people to say what $40 — the average amount an American worker would lose per paycheck without the extension — would mean to them, thousands of people responded on Twitter using the #40dollars hashtag.

Update

The House passed the extension deal by unanimous consent.

Update

After the House passed the deal, Reid named his conferees: Democratic Sens. Max Baucus (MT), Ben Cardin (MD), Jack Reed (RI) and Bob Casey (PA). House Democrats named their conferees before the House adjourned: Reps. Sandy Levin (MI), Xavier Becerra (CA), Chris Van Hollen (MD), Allyson Schwartz (PA), and Henry Waxman (CA).

Economy

BREAKING: McConnell Calls On House To Pass Two-Month Extension Of Payroll Tax Holiday

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Dec 22, 2011 at 11:48 am

Minutes after House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) delivered a press conference vowing to stand firm on the payroll tax holiday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) delivered a major blow to Boehner’s position, calling on the lower chamber to pass the Senate’s two-month extension, something which Boehner has refused to do. “The House should pass an extension that locks in the thousands of Keystone XL pipeline jobs, prevents any disruption in the payroll tax holiday or other expiring provisions, and allows Congress to work on a solution for the longer extensions,” McConnell said in a statement.

McConnell’s statement further isolates Boehner, who has found little support from fellow Republicans in his position, and gives President Obama new ammunition with which to attack Boehner in an upcoming speech today.

Boehner initially appeared to support the Senate’s bill, but quickly backtracked in an “apparent breakdown between Boehner and McConnell.” McConnell had remained silent on the payroll tax dispute since the Senate passed its version with overwhelming bipartisan support last week, likely could have avoided delivering a rare intra-party rebuke longer.

But Boehner’s intransigence, which risks raising taxes on 160 million Americans next year, is increasingly hurting the GOP, according to many leaders in the party, and perhaps McConnell felt he had to speak up before more damage was done. As The Hill reports today:

Senate Republicans are worried the standoff over extending the payroll tax holiday could hurt their chances of winning the upper chamber next year.

Senior Republican aides have made clear in private conversations that their bosses are not happy with how House Republicans have handled a bipartisan Senate compromise to extend tax relief for two months.

“It’s not helping,” a veteran Senate Republican strategist said of the House GOP fight against the Senate package. “Senate Republicans are tired of paying the price for the lack of legislative thoughtfulness in the House.”

Indeed, House Republicans have drawn the public ire of Karl Rove, the Wall Street Journal, conservative pundits, and five Senate Republicans, while they’ve found little support among the GOP 2012 presidential candidates. It’s still unclear what the endgame for the payroll tax issue will be, but it’s looking increasingly like it won’t be one in which Boehner comes out winning.

Update

A spokesman for Boehner said McConnell’s statement changes nothing. “The House and Senate have two different bills, but the same goal. That is why we believe, as Senator McConnell suggested, the two chambers should work to reconcile the two bills so that we can provide a full year of payroll tax relief — and do it before year’s end,” he said.

Justice

McConnell Takes Every Single Judicial Nominee Hostage To Sabotage Consumer Protection Agency

By Ian Millhiser on Dec 19, 2011 at 1:20 pm

On Saturday, the Senate closed off what was supposed to be its last day of business for the year (the Senate may need to reconvene, now that Speaker John Boehner has blown up a deal to extend tax cuts to middle class Americans). Yet the Senate closed out the year without confirming any of the 21 judicial nominees currently awaiting a vote on the Senate floor. Worse, according to the Senate’s chief obstructionist, these judicial nominees — along with more than two dozen other nominations — are intentionally being held hostage in order to prevent President Obama from recess appointing anyone to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:

At the end of a rare Saturday session, the Senate’s last day of official business for the year, McConnell blocked an effort by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to confirm more than 50 executive and judicial branch nominations awaiting Senate action.

And he laid out a condition to releasing his objection: “confirmation from the administration that it will respect practice and precedent on recess appointments.”

McConnell added that he needed from the White House “assurances that have been routinely given at this point with regard to recess appointments.”

It’s unclear just what “practice or precedent” McConnell is referring to, but there is no one who has less standing to complain about unprecedented action than McConnell himself — the lead architect of the Senate GOP’s nihilistic campaign to make it impossible for President Obama to govern. Without an agency head in place, the CFPB cannot perform many of its core functions. Yet, Senate Republicans are filibustering CFPB director-in-waiting Richard Cordray in order to sabotage this newly created consumer protection agency. If McConnell really cares one bit about respecting “practice and precedent,” he can show it by ending this blockade and recognizing that the Senate minority does not have the legitimate authority to effectively repeal an entire agency.

McConnell could also show that he respects practice and precedent by returning the Senate to the way it operated before he became minority leader. Simply put, no one in recent American history has done more to abuse the filibuster than Mitch McConnell — as demonstrated by the massive spike in votes attempting to break filibusters once McConnell took over the minority caucus:

President Obama is not powerless, however, against McConnell’s effort to sabotage the CFPB. If McConnell will not end his blockade, Obama can invoke the Roosevelt Precedent, which allows him to appoint Cordray the second the Senate adjourns for the year.

Climate Progress

GOP Threaten to Harm the Economy If Obama Won’t Embrace Tar Sands Pipeline

By Joe Romm on Dec 16, 2011 at 5:16 pm

UPDATE 12/22:  “House GOP Cave on Tax Cut Extension Paves Way for Obama to Deny Keystone XL Permit.”

Tweet from Dan PfeifferGOP Threaten to Kill Tax Relief and Unemployment Extension Over Keystone XL, Forcing a Quick Decision that Likely Dooms Pipeline — as GOP Intends!

buythis.jpg

JR:  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said today he will not support a payroll tax cut extension if he is not allowed to shoot this dog (or at least the climate the dog lives in) TPM reported today.  Apologies to “National Lampoon” and canine aficionados.

UPDATE:  Obama and the Dems caved to the GOP, agreeing to a decision in 60 days on Keystone in return for a 2-month (!) extension of tax relief and unemployment.  Reuters reports:

An administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the administration hadn’t changed its earlier stance that it would reject the application for Keystone if forced to act within a 60-day window.

That, I believe, is what the GOP wants.  I was on Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night and explained why:

By Kate Gordon and Daniel J. Weiss in a CAP repost

As Congress attempts to finish its 2011 work, the House leadership continues to push hard to speed up the permitting process for the Keystone XL pipeline. Today Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) threatened to add a Keystone provision to a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut, scheduled to expire on December 31. Boehner told reporters:

These rumors that are floating around here about a two-month extension, I’ll just say this: If that bill comes over to us, we will make changes to it, and I will guarantee you that the Keystone pipeline will be in there when it goes back to the United States Senate.

Ironically the State Department said Monday that such legislation would prevent it from approving the Keystone permit:

Should Congress impose an arbitrary deadline for the permit decision, its actions would not only compromise the process, it would prohibit the Department from acting consistently with National Environmental Policy Act requirements by not allowing sufficient time for the development of this information. In the absence of properly completing the process, the Department would be unable to make a determination to issue a permit for this project.

Nonetheless, on Wednesday House leadership—and some Democrats—passed a tax extender package that included a sped-up permitting process for the Keystone XL pipeline. In explaining why on earth this controversial 1,700-mile oil pipeline should be appended to a tax package focused on unemployment insurance and payroll taxes, Rep. Boehner argued that the pipeline private-sector infrastructure project “would create tens of thousands of American jobs.”

But as The Washington Post pointed out Wednesday, the Keystone project would do no such thing.

Read more

Older

Switch to Mobile