By Mark Hansel
NKyTribune managing editor
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was in Northern Kentucky Tuesday afternoon to speak to the media about what he described as President Donald Trump’s “very good week,” and other issues.
McConnell met with a group of reporters at the Northern Kentucky Association of REALTORS office in Florence.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell met with reporters in Northern Kentucky Tuesday to discuss a wide range of issues (photo by Mark Hansel).
He spoke first about the appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Obviously, the success of the Supreme Court appointment was a very important event for the country, he said. “(Gorsuch is) a very solid, well-qualified, new Supreme Court Justice who hopefully will serve for many years.”
McConnell dismissed the suggestion that the so-called nuclear option of approving the appointment of Gorsuch by a simple majority in the Senate, used to break a Democratic filibuster, was harmful to the process.
“The Democrats, in effect went back to where we were in 2000, four years ago, when they lowered the threshold to 51 for everything except the Supreme Court,” McConnell said. “We simply completed the circle last week and now all Executive Branch appointments, as they were for 230 years, will be approved with a simple majority.”
The situation in Syria and the role of the U.S. Government
The Senate Majority Leader also commended President Trump for the military strike in Syria, which he said served a multitude of purposes.
“I think it was as a signal that in today’s world, the use of chemical weapons is simply unacceptable.” McConnell said. “The only country to have the capability and the desire to send that message was the United States and the President did it extraordinarily well.”
Photo: U.S. Navy
The Unites States launched the military strike last week on a Syrian military airfield in response to a chemical weapons attack on civilians by the Syrian government.
He said the strike sent a message, not only to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other regimes that might be tempted to use chemical weapons, but also to Iran, North Korea and Russia.
“The United States intends to play a leadership role in the world, once again, not by engaging in every single military conflict, but by making it clear that the people of the countries in the world that are inclined to try to do the right thing have a fiend and a supporter in the United States,” McConnell said. “We’ll resume that role, as it was carried out prior to the previous administration.”
He added that he believes it was also reassuring to U.S. allies in the region that America does know the difference in the Middle East between those who are pursuing policies who are consistent with the United States and those who are not.
McConnell also provided his opinion of what the future holds for Syria, part of which, he said, must include a regime change.
“Having said that, I don’t think it’s the policy of this administration (to) go in and win the Syrian war. It is a cauldron of problems,” McConnell said. “You have ISIL, you have other terrorist groups, you have different sets of Kurds, you have Turkey opposed to the Assad Regime. You have Russia and the Iranians in favor of the Assad regime.”
The focus of the Trump administration, as with the Obama administration before it, he said, should be to take out the so-called caliphate capital Raqqa, the headquarters of ISIL in Syria.
“That is a clear mission we are trying to help achieve with our resources,” McConnell said. “That will not solve the ultimate Syrian complex situation, but I can’t imagine any solution that could include the continued regime of Assad. He’s a mass murderer and he’s simply not going to be part of the final settlement, whenever that may occur.”
The Spending Bill
McConnell said Democrats and Republicans are working collaboratively on a bipartisan basis, which he admits has been “kind of hard” in the first few months of the Trump Administration.
“The administration is engaged with Democrats as well and we know that this will have to be a bipartisan solution,” McConnell said. “This is not something in the Senate that can be done by one party only and, typically, appropriation bills in recent years haven’t been able to be passable by one party alone anyway. I think we will be able to work that out and avoid any kind of government shutdown scenario going into the end of April.”
McConnell dodged a question about funding for the border wall, saying he is in favor of border security, but exactly how that’s defined will be subject to negotiation with Democrats. He added that discussions include all of the issues that both sides care about.
“There are two tracts here, one is to finish this year’s spending bills, which are hugely late,” McConnell said. “That will happen by the end of the month and take government spending to September 30. We are also beginning next year’s appropriations process, which I hope will be handled in a more timely way. In the last few years, we have had very great difficulty in moving individual appropriations bills that fund the government.
Infrastructure and the Brent Spence Bridge
McConnell said one thing that he thinks Democrats and Republicans agree on is the need to upgrade the country’s infrastructure.
“The first step is for the administration to lay out a plan,” McConnell said. “I know the Secretary of Transportation (McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao) is a part of the discussions inside the administration about what they are going to recommend. We anticipate getting a recommendation about how much and how to pay for it out of the administration.”
While McConnell hopes funding for the Brent Spence Bridge is included in the infrastructure upgrades, he said the decision on tolls is not a Federal matter.
“That’s still a Frankfort decision,” McConnell said. “I know how controversial that has been here in Northern Kentucky, but that’s an issue that almost certainly won’t be decided at the Federal level. The way we do funding, the Federal Government collects the gas tax money, they send it down to the states and they decide how to spend it.”
President Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping
President Donald Trump (shown during a visit to Louisville last month) was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping when the United States launched a missile attack in Syria (photo courtesy of Kentucky Today).
McConnell said Trump was having dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping when the missiles were launched into Syria. He didn’t know if that was just a coincidence, or if the timing was related to the visit with the President of China.
“I know what (Trump) was talking to the President mostly about is helping us do something about North Korea,” McConnell said. “President Trump was told by President Obama that his single biggest problem would be North Korea. I think that was correct.”
McConnell described the unpredictable leadership of the North Korean government as a vexing problem for presidents of both parties for decades.
“The only solution anybody can think of, that might have a real chance of working would be for the Chinese to have a different view about North Korea,” McConnell said. “They basically prop them up, economically. They are the only country in the world with any real influence over the North Koreans.”
Contact Mark Hansel at mark.hansel@nkytrib.com
