The Hill: McConnell Fails To Deliver

According to The Hill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is failing to deliver.

After just over a month, McConnell is reportedly on the brink of breaking his promise to avoid shutting down government agencies, according to The Hill.

At the same time, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) continues to lash McConnell and Republicans in the Senate for failing to ram through a Department of Homeland Security funding bill that blocks the White House plan to halt deportations.

Just last December, McConnell claimed: “We don’t intend to engage in rhetoric nor actions that rattle the public.”

McConnell has already had to break his pledge to return the Senate to “regular order.”

He celebrated getting more votes on amendments on the Keystone XL bill than had been allowed in all of last year, but he shut down Democrats seeking to debate the pipeline.

“That led to complaints that he was in a hurry to help several Republicans get going to California for a weekend retreat with billionaire donors Charles and David Koch,” says The Hill.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) told reporters that McConnell went “Right back to a process of shutting everything down, even stopping people from having 60 seconds to speak about their amendments.”

“There is no sign that McConnell intends to reverse the ‘nuclear option’ rules change made by Democrats when they held the majority. McConnell had complained bitterly when Democrats made that shift but now shows no sign of wanting to switch the rules back again,” says The Hill.

“Sen. McConnell promised the moon but delivered a box of rocks,” said Adam Jentleson, the spokesman for Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), the Senate Minority Leader.

“The Republican Senate has started off as the least productive, most partisan, most contentious Senate in recent memory,” said Jentleson. “From bypassing committees on every single bill so far to trying to silence senators who dared to disagree with him to failing to hold a single Friday vote, Sen. McConnell is running a closed and partisan process that is extremely unproductive for the middle class.”

More:

http://thehill.com/opinion/juan-williams/233365-juan-williams-mcconnell-fails-to-deliver-in-senate

Republicans Vow More Gridlock On Climate Change

According to the Huffington Post, if anyone thought the announcement of a bilateral U.S.-China climate agreement on Wednesday might lead to a breakthrough on climate policy in Washington, Senate Republicans would like to inform them otherwise.

The presumptive Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said he was “distressed” by the U.S.-China deal, arguing that it “requires the Chinese to do nothing at all for 16 years while these carbon emission regulations are creating havoc in my state and other states around the country.”

Does this mean that McConnell feels there should be more stringent regulations on China, or no regulations on his state? He failed to address that topic.

President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the agreement on Wednesday. Under the deal, the U.S. will aim to cut emissions 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025, and China will reach its peak emissions by 2030. This was heralded as a major breakthrough on the path to a global climate agreement.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the chamber’s most vocal climate change denier and the likely new chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, took to the Senate floor Wednesday, criticizing the agreement for allowing China years before it begins to reduce emissions, and casting doubt that it ever would. “Even if they did agree to reducing emissions, we wouldn’t believe them,” said Inhofe. “They don’t end up doing what they say their going to do in these agreements.”

Oddly, Senator Inhofe is set to be the new chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Republicans also plan to take steps to gut the Environmental Protection Agency.

According to MSNBC, when asked the other day about his goals for the next Congress, McConnell (R-Ky.) said his top priority is “to try to do whatever I can to get the EPA reined in.”

Coral Davenport reported earlier this week that GOP leaders are united behind a vision intended to undermine EPA regulations:

“The new Republican Congress is headed for a clash with the White House over two ambitious Environmental Protection Agency regulations that are the heart of President Obama’s climate change agenda.

“At this point, Republicans do not have the votes to repeal the E.P.A. regulations, which will have far more impact on curbing carbon emissions than stopping the [Keystone] pipeline, but they say they will use their new powers to delay, defund and otherwise undermine them.”

Senator Inhofe is expected to open investigations into the E.P.A., call for cuts in its funding and delay the regulations as long as possible.

Davenport continues:

“Mr. McConnell signaled last week that he, too, wanted to cut the E.P.A.’s budget to keep it from enforcing environmental regulations. Republicans might also include provisions that would repeal the E.P.A. regulations in crucial spending bills – a tactic that could force a standoff between Mr. Obama and Mr. McConnell over funding the government.”

Paul Begala: People Voted For Gridlock

There’s a good case to be made that people voted for more gridlock in yesterday’s election.

Paul Begala, a former consultant to President Clinton, made that case.

According to him:

“One lesson from the 2014 midterms: Voters love gridlock.”

The Mitch McConnell victory “is not only a victory for McConnell. It is a victory for gridlock and extreme partisanship.”

It was McConnell, after all, who told the National Journal in 2010, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President.”

He states that after the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut, McConnell vowed to fight “tooth and nail” to block any effort by the President to impose restrictions, including stiffening background checks on gun purchases.

The gun safety law, of course, garnered overwhelming public support; 92% of gun owners supported universal background checks. But thanks to McConnell, the National Rifle Association and its allies were able to defeat the measure.

Begala states, “It was pure McConnell: audacious, partisan, ugly — but successful. It was a strategy McConnell repeated again and again as Obama initiatives crashed into McConnell’s wall of obstructionism.”

“In their wisdom, the voters of the commonwealth of Kentucky have chosen to reward that partisanship and obstructionism. I accept that and honor that. But please don’t tell me voters don’t like partisanship and obstruction in Washington; they just re-elected the king of gridlock.”

Welcome to Mitch McConnell’s world.