Next Steps on the Security Supplemental

Interview

‘It won't have a surrender date,' McConnell says

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell appeared on CNBC this evening. He discussed the surrender date legislation defeated in the Senate and the next steps for the supplemental funding bill. The following are excerpts from the program:

On the Senate's bipartisan rejection of the surrender date legislation:

"I think the Democrats demonstrated today there are only 29 out of 100 votes here in the Senate for a date for surrender. Now, having demonstrated that, actually on entirely different bill, we will get the appropriation bill into conference with the House tomorrow. Sen. Reid and I will sit down with the President's designee, Josh Bolten his chief of staff, and we'll begin to negotiate a final settlement of the actual troop funding bill.

On the supplemental funding bill:

"I believe there's a great likelihood…that we'll have a measure the President can sign on his desk before Memorial Day."

"It will be on the President's terms. I think probably some benchmarks for the Iraqi government in there—almost everybody is in favor of that."

"Beyond that it won't have surrender date; only 29 members of the Senate voted for that earlier today. And it will get the funding to the troops—not divided up, two months now and two months later, like the House bill—but a full-term, four-month bill."

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