Press Conference following the Senate Republican Conference Retreat with Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY); Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN); Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ); Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-KY); Senator John Ensign (R-NV); and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX

Statement

Press Conference following the Senate Republican Conference Retreat with Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY); Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN); Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ); Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-KY); Senator John Ensign (R-NV); and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX)

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SEN. ALEXANDER: Thank you, Mitch.

Since 8:30 we've been meeting continuously. We had a terrific, upbeat conference; 44 of the 49 Republican senators attended. If I could sum it up, I would say it this way: Republican Senators are ready to roll up our sleeves and go to work. We want to change the way Washington does business, and we believe the way to do that is to work across party lines to get results on big issues that Americans genuinely care about.

Examples. Protecting us from terrorists. Senator Kyl will talk about how we're ready to pass this week legislation that would make it easier for us to protect our country from terrorists. Senator McConnell has also talked about the work that we're doing to try to meet the possible economic slowdown. We're talking about plans that we can begin to work on this year that will meet our goal of having every American have health insurance. Senator Hutchison talks about implementing the American Competitiveness Act so our jobs don't go to China. Senator Conrad and Senator Gregg are working together across party lines on ways to reduce the entitlement spending which will bankrupt us.

There's no excuse for our taking the year off when so many important things remain to be done here. So you're going to be seeing, this year, a steady stream of Republican senators with specific solutions that either are bipartisan or ought to be bipartisan. And we believe that's what the American people expects of us, and that's what we're looking forward to doing. Thank you.

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Q Senator McConnell, I do understand that a number of the questions went after the point of whether or not it's necessary to spend, or smart to spend, $150 billion right now. Could you talk about how widespread those concerns are in your conference, and whether or not it's enough to slow down this bill?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Yeah, I wouldn't want to characterize the nature of the questions. We had a broad range of questions. We probably, I don't know, how many people spoke on Paulson?

SEN. ALEXANDER: On that, we probably had 16 or 17 senators speak directly to Secretary Paulson, who stayed with us for nearly an hour. And at one point, he limited his responses so he could hear from more of the senators. He stayed longer than he expected. He got a wide range of views.

I think the leader's right. We try not to characterize what's said in those conferences. But I think, it's fair to say, he got as many questions about whether it was enough money as he did about whether it wasn't enough money.

So it was a whole range of suggestions. And what we especially appreciated was that both he and the OMB director, Nussle, came to talk with us in advance of actions that the president might take and decisions he might make, got our feedback. So we didn't expect them to have all their decisions made.

Q Is this a growing concern within the Republican Conference, that it's spending too much money right now? Or is this maybe a small group of people who don't like it?

SEN. ALEXANDER: The only thing I would say to that is that my sense of the Republican senators' questions was that we care about the impact that the economic slowdown is having on middle-income families who are experience difficulty with gasoline prices, with health care costs and with the housing slump. And we want to make sure that whatever we do is right, so we're having a wide-ranging discussion considering all points of view, which is why a meeting like this was very helpful.

And the discussion was all over the lot. It was very wide-ranging. I wouldn't say there was a particular faction or section.

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