McConnell: Our President’s Radicalism
U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered remarks on the Senate floor regarding President Biden’s Joint Session Address:
McConnell was Tuesday’s KVML “Newsmaker of the Day”. Here are his words:
“President Biden delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress. And marked his 100th day in office.
President Biden is a likeable person. Many of us remember serving with him in this chamber.
But while the tone of his remarks were understated, the content was anything but.
He talked at length about competing with China without mentioning that he wants to cut U.S. defense spending after inflation. Exactly what we cannot do if we want to keep pace.
He talked about immigration without taking any responsibility for the border crisis that has his Administration packing unaccompanied children into facilities and releasing arrivals into the country.
And the President talked about unity and togetherness while reading off a multi-trillion-dollar shopping list that was neither designed nor intended to earn bipartisan buy-in.
A blueprint for giving Washington D.C. even more money and even more power to micromanage American families and build the country liberal elites want instead of the future Americans want.
Think back to the start of this administration. Remember its Day One priorities:
Axing a pipeline project that would have supported thousands of jobs; freezing the exploration behind America’s energy independence; and re-signing the climate agreement that has gotten less emissions reduction out of China, who’s inside in the deal, than the U.S. achieved on our own from outside the deal.
The approach has remained equally radical since.
Even after the CDC’s own experts showed months ago that schools are safe, the Administration’s partisan COVID bill threw money at districts without requiring prompt re-openings.
As a humanitarian crisis mounts at the southern border, the President’s team has offered mixed messaging and ineffectiveness.
While Iran keeps ramping up nuclear rhetoric and financing terror across the Middle East, this White House keeps downplaying Iranian terror. And they appear eager to squander sanctions leverage just to climb back into a failed deal from the Obama era.
And again, as Russia and China fast-track military modernization, President Biden turned in a defense spending proposal that would put U.S. forces behind the curve.
That was the backdrop for last night’s speech.
But instead of practical plans to fulfill these basic responsibilities, America heard a lengthy liberal daydream.
We heard about the so-called “Jobs Plan,” packed with punitive tax hikes at exactly the time our nation needs a recovery. Ivy League experts say it would actually leave American workers with lower wages at the end of the day.
We heard about the so-called “Family Plan,” another gigantic tax-and-spend colossus.
Instead of empowering all kinds of families with flexibility, this one would just subsidize specific paths that Democrats deem best, so Washington can call the shots from early childhood through college graduation.
But wait — there was more!
There was hostility toward the Second Amendment rights of American citizens.
There was support for Democrats’ sweeping election takeover bill that would neuter voter I.D. in all 50 states, make the Federal Election Commission a partisan body, and legalize ballot harvesting, where paid political operatives can show up carrying stacks of other people’s ballots.
Here’s the bottom line.
Recall that more than a year ago, at the outset of the pandemic, a top House Democrat said this crisis provided the left ‘a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.’
Well, last night, President Biden said much the same: That his Administration intends to turn ‘crisis into opportunity.’
The far left certainly gets the message. Some of the most liberal members of Congress have gone out of their way to say they are surprised and delighted by the President’s willingness to do things their way.
Even a neutral wire report explained yesterday that the Biden agenda seeks to ‘fundamentally transform and expand government’s role in the lives of everyday Americans.’
It’s an attempt to continue dragging a divided country farther and faster to the left.
This Administration wants to jack up taxes in order to nudge families toward the kinds of jobs Democrats want them to have, in the kinds of industries Democrats want to exist, with the kinds of cars Democrats want them to drive, using the kinds of childcare arrangements that Democrats want them to pursue.
These plans aren’t about creating options and flexibility for Americans; they’re about imposing a vision.
And instead of encouraging work, and rewarding work, and helping connect more Americans with opportunities to work and build their lives, this Administration is working overtime to break the link between work and income. Outside observers across the political spectrum agree these Democrats are un-learning the commonsense, pro-work lessons of bipartisan welfare reform from the 1990s.
This isn’t what the American people voted for.
This country just elected a 50-50 Senate, a very closely-divided House, and a President who talked a big game about cutting deals, bringing people together, and building bridges.
But even on subjects as historically bipartisan as pandemic relief, voting rights, and infrastructure, our Democratic friends have become addicted to divide-and-conquer. As our distinguished colleague Senator Tim Scott put it: ‘They won’t even build bridges… to build bridges!’
Well, it doesn’t have to be this way.
Republicans support actually competing with China.
Republicans support actually helping working families.
Republicans support actual infrastructure.
Ranking Member Capito and a number of our leading Republican colleagues have rolled out a multi-hundred-billion-dollar targeted infrastructure proposal. Today, in fact, the Senate is set to pass bipartisan legislation to help states and localities provide clean and safe drinking water.
Our President will not secure a lasting legacy through go-it-alone radicalism.
He won’t get much done that way. It won’t be good for the country. And whatever the Democrats do get done through partisan brute force will be fragile.
The American people need us to find common ground and move this country forward together.”
The “Newsmaker of the Day” is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.
