Press Conference with Sens. Mitch McConnell, Trent Lott, Jon Kyl, Kay Bailey Hutchison on Appropriations, SCHIP and Attorney General Nomination

Interview

Press Conference with Sens. Mitch McConnell, Trent Lott, Jon Kyl, Kay Bailey Hutchison on Appropriations, SCHIP and Attorney General Nomination

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SEN. MCCONNELL: Good afternoon, everyone. Let me touch on a couple of points, and then I'll turn to my colleagues.

First with regard to the Mukasey nomination to be attorney general, it's now been pending for four and a half weeks. The average time for confirmation of an attorney general over the last 20 years has been three and a half weeks. I'm told he's not on the agenda for the Judiciary meeting this week. I would remind you all that our friends on the other side of the aisle have been complaining all year that the Justice Department was without leadership and understaffed. The best way to -- again, to cure that problem is to report this completely noncontroversial nominee out of Judiciary Committee, get him confirmed on the floor of the Senate and get him to work.

So you can't on the one hand, it seems to me, complain about lack of leadership and then on the other hand slow-walk a nominee who is almost totally without controversy and in fact was somebody that Senator Schumer himself suggested be nominated.

Second, with regard to SCHIP, we're now into a period where we should be negotiating. Senator Hutchison has, as you know, gotten a letter signed by the 18 members of my conference who voted for the bill that the president vetoed, indicating that we needed to get this matter settled as soon as possible. This is the time to be talking about a settlement and not the time to be continuing to posture politically.

With that, let me turn to Senator Lott, and then he'll turn to Senator Kyl.

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Q Senator McConnell, do you want to see an energy bill conference this year? And Senator Hutchison, maybe you could speak to some of your concerns about the provisions as they lay now.

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well -- (chuckles) -- it would be good if we had an energy bill. It's a very important subject. What has yet to be determined is exactly how it's going to be finally crafted. As you know, whether we're going to end up having a product as a result of a conference or as a result of some kind of ping-pong process is still under discussion. But my assumption is that there will be some kind of energy bill produced in some way here this year.

Q Do you want to play ping-pong or do you want a formal process?

SEN. MCCONNELL: I think it's better to have a bill than not, but again, it depends on what's in it. I mean, the one that left the Senate, I think, is a big step in the wrong direction from a Kentucky point of view. (Chuckles.) So it depends on what's in it.

Q Senator, will you block -- would you block the bill or are you willing to move forward with that?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, we are -- (to Senator Hutchison) -- do you want to -- we're basically just --

SEN. HUTCHISON: Let me take it.

SEN. MCCONNELL: Yeah, go ahead.

SEN. HUTCHISON: Well, I'll just say that I'm certainly willing to talk about it. But I have the same concerns that Senator McConnell has, and that is, what direction would we be moving? The Senate bill had some, I think, bad features; the House bill had some worse features, and so I'm not sure the right way to proceed. And I just think that we need to take the time and look at it carefully.

Q Senator McConnell --

Q Senator McConnell, the Democrats are planning to send the Labor-HHS bill to the White House as the first spending bill, and there's a veto threat against it. Do you think there are votes in the Senate to sustain a presidential veto of the Labor-HHS?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, we'll be -- I will be offering, along with Senator Lott, an amendment to commit it back to committee, be reported back out at the president's request level. I think there is substantial feeling in my conference -- maybe not unanimous, but very substantial -- that we ought to hold these discretionary accounts to the overall amount that the president requested in order to show some willingness to restrain spending.

We're going to have to see what these bills look like at the end of the day. The conference could pare it back, so I think we'll have to wait and see how good a job the conferences do at meeting the spending request. But there's substantial objection in my conference, which well could include more than 34 votes, to busting the budget on these discretionary accounts.

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