McConnell on CNN's 'State of the Union'

The leader of the Republicans in the Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky was on CNN's "State of the Union" program yesterday discussing a number of issues being addressed or not being addressed in the Democrat-controlled 111th Congress. He talked about the spending spree of the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress and the need to cut spending among other serious problems facing America.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell appeared on CNN's ‘State of the Union with Candy Crowley' this morning. The following are excerpts from the program:

On Oil Spill Legislation: "You can't legislate competence... We are happy to look at oil spill legislation. For example, do we have the right kind of commission in place to look at what happened? There are aspects of that that might require legislation. But this has mainly been a competence problem on the part of the administration in keeping the oil off of our shores."

On The Democrat Tax Hike Of 2011: "Well, the issue is whether we're going to raise taxes. This is current tax law, and what [Democrats are] saying is we ought to raise taxes in the middle of a very, very difficult economic environment. I don't think it's a good idea to raise taxes in a middle of an, of a situation like we face today... [Democrats] will come back and say, ‘oh, we're only talking about raising taxes on the top income earners.' Well, if you do that, you will capture the income of 50 percent of small businesses in this country."

On Perils Of Raising Taxes During A Recession: "We believe the problem is not that we tax too little, but that we spend too much, and we've had this rate for taxes now for almost a decade. The question is not cutting taxes. The question is raising taxes. What they're trying to do, Candy, is to argue that at this juncture, with this kind of economic environment, we ought to have a significant tax increase. I don't know the economists you're talking to, but the ones I'm talking to are saying raising taxes in the middle of a recession is not a good idea."

On Extending Unemployment Benefits Without Adding Debt: "Somewhere in the course of spending a trillion dollars, we ought to be able to find enough to pay for a program for the unemployed. We're -- we're all for extending unemployment insurance. The question is when are we going to get serious, Candy, about the debt? ... If we can't pay for a program like extension of unemployment insurance that virtually every member of the Senate -- I think, in fact, every member of the Senate wants to extend, then what are we going to pay for? When do we start?"

On The Financial Regulation Bill: "They've just passed, in my view, a terrible financial services bill, supported, interestingly enough, by Wall Street and opposed by community bankers. It's going to require the issuance of 370 new regulations."

On Saying No To Bad Ideas: "Look, what we are proud to say no to, and I think what the public wants us to say no to are things like the government running banks, insurance companies, car companies, nationalizing the student loan business, taking over our health care... We have had an explosion of hiring of federal employees with borrowed money. They have got people over at the FCC trying to regulate the Internet. People over at the NLRB trying to get rid of the secret ballot in labor union elections by regulation... Let me make it clear, we are absolutely opposed to all of those things, and proudly so."

On Working With The President: "There are some things the President is trying to do that we support. We support his efforts in Afghanistan, I think he is on the right track there. I think he continued the policy successfully in Iraq. He says he is for trade deals, where are they? We would like to help him pass them. He says he is for nuclear power. What is he prepared to do on that? We are for that. He says he is for clean coal technology, we haven't seen any evidence of any action on that, but we are for that."

On Democrats' National Energy Tax: "Seizing on the spill in the Gulf to try to pass a national energy tax strikes me as one more example of what the President's Chief of Staff said famously early on in the administration, "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste." In other words, you have a crisis over here and you try to use that as an excuse to pass a piece of legislation over here... I think there are things in the energy area we could and should do. What I am not interested in doing is using the oil spill as an excuse to pass a national energy tax."

On The Obama Administration's "Spending Spree: "How long can the other side run against the previous administration? They've been in charge now for a year and a half. They've been on a gargantuan spending spree. They've taken, as I said, the deficit as a percentage of GDP from 3.2 percent to almost 10 percent in a year and a half. Look, at what point do we pivot and start being concerned about our children and our grandchildren?"

On Fixing The Spending Problem: "I think that we have a serious problem here because we spend too much. I think we ought to concentrate on the spending side. I've in fact been encouraged by the comments of Erskine Bowles, who's one of the chairmen of the President's Deficit Reduction Commission, a Democrat, who's saying that he thinks two-thirds or three-fourths of the problem is a spending problem... That's where we ought to start."