McConnell: GOP Majority Will Reduce Washington's Gridlock

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, giving the final GOP weekly address before Tuesday's midterm elections, said that if Republicans take over the Senate majority, it will lessen Washington's gridlock by allowing more bills go to President Barack Obama's desk.

"A new Republican majority wouldn’t mean we’d be able to get everything you want from Washington," said the Kentucky senator, who is facing a challenge from Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes for his Kentucky seat. "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."

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In addition, a Republican majority would have the focus 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," McConnell said Saturday.

Times are difficult, said McConnell, as "events seem to keep spinning out of control, whether at home or abroad," and nobody in the Obama administration has "a real handle" on what to do next.

"Costs always seem to go up, but wages and opportunities never seem to keep pace," McConnell said. "Even the President admits that wages and incomes have been stagnant during his time in the White House."

But during difficult time, Americans want real leadership from Washington, not more unworkable ideas that make problems worse, he continued

"They don’t need a health law that cancels policies and too often makes health care even less affordable for you and your family," McConnell said. "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."

McConnell said that it's little wonder that nearly seven in 10 Americans believe the United States is "headed seriously off track," and that the middle class does not believe Washington works for them.

During the past six years, with Obama and Democrats holding power in Washington, they were able to get what they wanted, including Obamacare, the stimulus, higher taxes, more regulations and record debt levels, said the Kentucky incumbent.

However, their policies have not gotten the country moving, and "more of the same isn't going to work," McConnell said.

"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," he said.

The Democrat majority blocks "nearly every common-sense idea," the senator continued, including reform and job bills that do have bipartisan support.

"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," said McConnell. "We think it’s time for the President to start doing the job he was elected to do."

Republicans want to "ease the squeeze" for working families by improving economic opportunities and making it easier for families to join the middle class, said McConnell, and by increasing college graduates' career prospects.

"Our view is that Congress shouldn’t be in the business of protecting the President from good ideas," said McConnell, who did not mention his own current re-election campaign in the speech. "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."

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