Speaking on Fox News with host Martha MacCallum on Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McDonnell, fed-up with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s grandstanding on the coronavirus stimulus bill passed by the Senate, fired back, “I wish Nancy would turn off all those political talking points.”
McConnell began by noting that the Senate had come together after the divisiveness of the impeachment proceedings that targeted President Trump:
If you think about it, Martha, we’ve pivoted from impeachment, one of the most contentious fights you can imagine, to passing this rescue package, 96-0. I was proud of the Senate; we came together in less than a week, which was a very challenging thing to do in Congress, with lots of different types of people and lots of different points of view, and we delivered it. I’m confident the House will pass it tomorrow.
MacCallum commented, “So in terms of the House; Nancy Pelosi basically said, thank goodness we got our arms around this thing; Republicans wanted it to be just a big gift to corporations in America, and we wrestled with it and made it something that works for the American worker and the middle class. What do you say to that?”
McConnell answered, “I wish Nancy would turn off all those political talking points. An awful lot of Americans work for big companies. So we didn’t want to exclude the employees simply because of the size of their employer. She knows better than that, and that’s just the kind of thing that she routinely says. I hope it comforts her members because I certainly want them to take up and pass this bill that not a single Republican in the Senate opposed.”
MacCallum played a clip of Pelosi saying, “We had a proposal on pensions in the legislation that my understanding was, and I trust that it’s true, that the president supported, but Senator McConnell wouldn’t do it, but said we’ll do it in the next bill, so we’re ready for that.”
MacCallum asked, “So what is the next bill, and how many more phases of this do you see, sir?”
McConnell replied, “Well, we have a pension problem, but it’s not related to the coronavirus; that’s why it’s not in the bill.”
MacCallum agreed the pension problem was not related to the coronavirus, saying, “No, it’s not.”
McConnell continued, “The emergency bill that we may have to pass in the future needs to be related to the subject. And that was a problem here as some of the elbowing was going on when the Speaker came back from California and tried to get involved in the Senate bill by suggesting a number of things that were completely unrelated to the coronavirus crisis but more related to the Democratic policy agenda. So we’re not going to use these coronavirus relief bills as a way to pass Democratic policy proposals. That’s not what this emergency’s about.”
Asked about the fact that bill might possibly pay people even more than they would normally make and if that would disincentivize them from returning to work, McConnell replied, “Well, we’re all wrestling with that. We’re all listening to Dr. Fauci; you just had Dr Birx on; we can’t get back to normal totally until we defeat this virus, and so our health care professionals, who don’t have a political label, are the people who can help us get out of this pandemic, which is creating the economic problem. So it is a tough call; we all want to get back to normal.”
McConnell noted that most Americans are suffering from “cabin fever, they’re stuck at home, many of them, unable to get out, and unable to get this economy, which was roaring, back up again.”