McConnell: Senate 'didn't do squat' for past few years
By Kelly Cohen | December 23, 2014 | 1:24 pm
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell knows he will have his hands full with the 114th Congress.
Beginning on Jan. 6, the Kentucky Republican said he hopes to push bipartisan legislation and lead a successful Congress — a notable difference from the past few years under Democratic leadership.
“The Senate basically didn’t do squat for years. I don’t think most members of the Senate wanted it run that way,” McConnell told the New York Times.
McConnell, who was elected to his sixth term in November, also took a shot at the Tea Party wing of his own party.
“One of my challenges is to try to convince some of my members that passing an appropriations bill is a good thing, not a bad thing,” McConnell said.
So far, McConnell already has extended the workweek, scheduling the Senate to be in session for the first six weeks of 2015, as well as meeting on Fridays.
“It will more chaotic, there will probably be later nights,” McConnell said. “The goal is to let the Senate express its views.”
The first view? The building of the Keystone XL pipeline, which will be first bill Senate Republicans put on the floor.
“I have studied this job and reached my own conclusions about how it ought to be done,” McConnell, Kentucky's longest-serving senator, said about finally being the Senate's leader. “It has been a long wait.”
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/mcconnell-senate-didnt-do-squat-for-past-few-years/article/2557777
