Media Stakeout with Mitch McConnell; Senator Jon Kyl; Senator Kay Bailey; Senator John Cornyn - Congressional Appropriations

Statement

Media Stakeout with Mitch McConnell; Senator Jon Kyl; Senator Kay Bailey; Senator John Cornyn - Congressional Appropriations

SEN. MCCONNELL (R-KY): (In progress) -- let me just touch on the items that need to be completed. I think the Majority Leader would agree with this as well. We need to dispose of the alternate minimum tax issue. It should have been done months ago, but it still needs to be accomplished before we leave this year.

We still have, regretfully, 11 out of 12 appropriation bills. I think the preference of the majority of the House and Senate is to deal with the appropriations issue with an omnibus, although a CR is certainly an alternative. My view, and I think the view of the majority of my conference, is that any passage of an omnibus must include an adequate fund for the troops to carry over into probably March of next year. So those two issues will be inextricably intertwined.

In addition to that we are, I think, close to being able to go forward on FISA. Obviously the vast majority of my conference prefers the Intelligence Committee version of the FISA bill. Although it has at least some trouble, it is vastly preferable to the Judiciary Committee proposal. At the end of the day, obviously, this needs to get a presidential signature. I think there's no chance that the Judiciary Committee version or the House passed version would get a presidential signature.

So, there's much to do. A lot of this could have been done earlier in the year. This is a Congress that's likely to be noted for its lack of accomplishment. We all know the American people hold it in low esteem, probably the lowest esteem in polling history for a Congress. I think that's largely related to a fixation on Iraq. I think at last count we've had 63 Iraq votes this year, and an inattention to all the other things.

It is not too late. There are three weeks left. There's much that still could be accomplished. There's going to be a high level of Republican cooperation in trying to pass the measures that I just outlined.

With that, let me turn it over to Senator Lott.

(Cross talk.)

SEN. JON KYL (R-AZ): The leader has certainly outlined a great deal of unfinished business. And it's not just a matter for Congress to act, but this broken Congress has consequences that are very real for the American people. Let me just illustrate two.

Not being able to find a consensus with Republicans on the alternative minimum tax means that even if we do provide some kind of a fix for the 20 million people who will be surprised that they're going to have to pay the tax for this year, there are already about 50 million Americans who will be adversely affected in terms of a late refund and complications in dealing with the IRS next year. And on the failure to fund the troops, which was requested by the president ten months ago, there have been very real consequences. You've seen the correspondence from Gordon England, from Secretary Gates, that have required them to begin the process now of notifying people in the Department of Defense about furloughs and of warning of other changes that are going to have to take place here, not to mention, of course, the far more important problems that the lack of funding could have in the field with these brave men and women who we've sent to accomplish a mission.

So the bottom line is that the broken Congress doesn't just put a burden on those of us here to try to get some things done before the holidays, it's had real consequences for the American people and for our fighting troops. And that's a shame.

SEN. KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON (R-TX): Well I'd like to just talk about the energy legislation because I think this is so important and we're actually very close to making an agreement. I know that Senator Domenici thought we had an agreement on the energy bill with the House, that it would not have a tax title, the tax being $16 billion on the oil industry, which would raise the price of fuel and would lower the supply, which is exactly the opposite of what we ought to be doing in Congress. And then secondly, putting the renewable portfolio standards in that we know that at least 12 states could not possibly meet.

So, those were agreed to be taken out and yet the House appears to be on the brink of passing the bill with those items in it. So once again, we have the potential for an agreement and yet the Democrats are walking away from what everyone thought would be a deal so that we could have the CAFÉ standards that did come into a very good compromise that I think everyone would be seeing as a major step forward for the environment in our country. And yet, the Democrats are walking away from it and passing something that they know will not go through the Senate and would not be good for the consumers of our country.

So I would call on the Democrats once again to try to accomplish something in this Congress. After all, as Senator McConnell said, what more low ratings do we have to get to show that the American people are ready for Congress to produce results.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): It remains to be seen whether the next three weeks will reveal really a slow motion train wreck in progress or whether we're going to use the opportunity to try to roll up our sleeves and solve some of the problems that have festered and waited too long for resolution. I just want to emphasize two of those. One is, why in the world when we're at war, when we have troops in harms way, would we withhold the funding, emergency funding, for our troops in Iraq in order to use it as political leverage here at the end of the year? It's important we get that troop funding done without strings attached, without arbitrary deadlines, particularly at a time when our military commanders in the field are showing some tremendous success.

And likewise on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Why in the world would we not want to listen to conversations between two foreign terrorists and to use that information not only to detect but to deter future terrorist attacks both here and Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world? Those seem to me to be no-brainers that we ought to be acting on promptly, rather than delaying them any further.

SEN. MCCONNELL: We'll take a few questions if there are any.

Q: Senator McConnell, your office said you're opposed to an agreement -- (inaudible) -- on AMT. Can you talk a little bit about that?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, we're working on a consent agreement which would give us a road map for various votes on the AMT. So that's under discussion. We haven't gotten there yet. But I think there's widespread bipartisan agreement that we ought to deal with that issue.

We should have dealt with it a long time ago.

Q: Senator, what will the Republican alternative be? There are actually --

SEN. MCCONNELL: We'll let you know as soon as we get the agreement agreed to, then we'll -- you'll know what we're going to be asking people to vote on.

Q: (Off mike.) -- do you think that the pace of progress on some of these bills would be faster than it has been in the past -- (inaudible).

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, you know, the fundamental problem we've had is too many early closure petitions in this Congress. Take the farm bill, for example. We would have long since finished it, in my view, had we just simply taken it up in a more open way, as we have in the past on the farm bill. It would have been out of here and ready for conference.

I think the majority has been trying to shut us out by filing early closure and then when we refuse to invoke closure, which of course would eliminate our rights to offer amendments, then they move off the bill and go on to the next one. Now what that gets you in the end is not much. If you're the majority you're expected to pass legislation. We would prefer to pass legislation but we're not going to -- not now, not tomorrow, not ever -- allow our rights to just be obliterated by premature closure. So, you know, maybe next session they'll figure this out and we'll get more done quicker.

But now, we don't have much left, much time left in the calendar year. And at the risk of being redundant I think people would like to finish the appropriation bills on both sides of the aisle. People would like to do the AMT on both sides of the aisle. And we'd like to take a shot at getting a FISA bill that actually is signed by the president of the United States rather than just spinning our wheels on something that's not going to become law. I mean at some point, compromises have to be made in order for legislation to get a signature.

Q: On the remaining appropriation bills (are ?) you willing to compromise somewhere between the president's number and the Democratic offer?

SEN. MCCONNELL: All of those discussions are underway. Senator Reid and I have been talking about it for some time. I'm headed down to the White House for a meeting to discuss the matter with the president later today. I think the discussions will commence and we'll see where we get. The one thing I can tell you for sure is that Republicans believe that the issue of adequate funding for our troops, without micromanagement from Congress, needs to be a part of any final settlement that includes passing the 11 appropriation bills.

Q: Senator, can we get your reaction to the NIE on Iran and does it change what the U.S. should do and -- (inaudible).

SEN. MCCONNELL: Yeah, I mean, we had a -- we've been talking about the NIE and what it said and what it didn't say. We're learning more about what may be read into what it didn't say. I think there's going to be a lot of discussion about it the next couple of days.

One thing I think we can stipulate, our Sunni Arab allies like the Egyptians, the Saudis and the Jordanians, our Israeli ally, our European allies the French, the Germans and the British, we all agree that a non-nuclear Iran is essential. I don't think the NIE, personally, changes the ultimate goal. And while there may have been differences -- for example on Iraq, I don't find any differences on Iran. I think we're all pretty much in agreement that it's -- that Iran should not be allowed to get nuclear weapons. I'm going to take one more if there is one.

Q: When you spoke about carrying the money -- the money that would carry the troops into March, do you see another turning point when General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker come back here? Is that why you're saying March?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, we're not going to be here for most of January. Unless we want to deal with this issue yet again right at the beginning of the next session, it strikes me if we want to do anything else on any other subject it might be a good idea to deal with the period from not until March or so. I mean, that would be my thought. All of that will be discussed in the next few days and we need to reach a settlement on it before we leave.

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