On the floor of the United States Senate on Wednesday, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke about President Joe Biden’s upcoming address to Congress, taking aim at the difference between the president’s polarizing actions and “moderate” rhetoric.
McConnell said he will be “curious to hear how the president tries to square his rhetoric with the administration’s actions over the past hundred days.”
He said, “President Biden pledged he would be ‘A president for all Americans’ with plans to repair, restore and heal,” adding that the American people elected a 50/50 Senate, a closely divided House and a president who preached moderation and “promised that his whole soul was committed to uniting our people.” McConnell noted that many hoped that his administration would reflect his promise; however, the Republican leader went on to describe how Biden’s administration has taken increasingly partisan actions.
“But the first hundred days have left much to be desired,” McConnell said. “Over a few short months, the Biden administration seems to have given up on selling actual unity in favor of catnip for their liberal base, covered with a hefty coat of false advertising.”
McConnell pointed out that the American Rescue Plan was marketed as a COVID-19 relief measure, but it only directed less than 10% to vaccines and pandemic healthcare. He also discussed HR-1, the Democrats’ push for a massive change in voting laws, noting how the marketing for the plan is different than for a similar plan put forth in 2016, but it is the same massive overhaul.
He turned to the American Jobs Plan, saying that it “would decimate entire industries and spend only a small fraction on roads and bridges.”
He added, “It’s being sold as a serious effort to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure. It’s pretty brazen misdirection. At both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, Democrats have chosen to live in an alternate universe where both the campaign promises they made and the mandate the American people delivered were actually completely different than what happened right here on planet Earth.”
The Minority Leader spoke out against the mixed messages that came from the Biden administration on the state of the coronavirus pandemic in the nation, pointing out how the “existing vaccine distribution efforts surpassed President Biden’s supposedly ambitious daily target on the day he was sworn in.”
He said that Biden “continues to issue directives that are strangely out of step with the science, like his big announcement several weeks ago that if citizens behave themselves, he would actually permit them to enjoy small, outdoor gatherings on July 4th that the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidance already says would be safe right now.”
McConnell pointed to the child migrant crisis and influx of migrants at the United States southern border, saying, “the White House’s foremost concern seems to have been to avoid calling this what it is: a crisis.” He also criticized Biden’s foreign policy actions with regards to the middle east, China, and Russia.
“Ignoring the facts. Passing the buck. Squandering leverage,” he said. “This is not what the American people bargained for. And they know it doesn’t have to be this way.”
“Behind President Biden’s familiar face, it’s like the most radical Washington Democrats have been handed the keys, and they’re trying to speed as far left as they can possibly go before American voters ask for the car back,” he said.
“But it’s not too late. This White House can shake off its daydreams of a sweeping socialist legacy that will never happen in the United States,” he said, adding that the American people want and deserve a government that works together and solves the nation’s problems rather than “an administration that chooses to govern like it owes everything — everything — to the radical left.”