Press Stakeout With Senator Mitch McConnell

Press Conference

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, good afternoon, everyone.

Back in December, I issued an invitation to the president, the then-president-elect, to come up and join us for lunch. And as you know, he just did that. We had a very frank exchange of views. He stayed for a very lengthy period of time, which my members appreciated. A number of Republican senators both asked questions and made observations about the current economic situation.

I think everyone was very pleased with the level of candor, the desire to look for bipartisan solutions. So I think it was a very, very constructive meeting. And I know I'm speaking for every single member of our conference that we appreciated his coming up and enjoyed the whole exchange.

With that, we'll take a couple of questions, if there are any.

Q (Off mike.) Do you feel like you got anything from him, in terms of a commitment to do some of the things that you've been calling for, for example, expand the tax cut package, lower the spending?

SEN. MCCONNELL: I don't want to characterize what he had to say. You'll, I'm sure, ask his people, you know, what his views were.

Let me just say that we offered a number of suggestions. I think the impression we were left with is that they were interested in taking a look at our suggestions. Larry Summers was with him. And I think he -- all of our thoughts were registering with him.

As you know, he's also got to deal with the Democratic side, too, and they have a lot of suggestions and many of their suggestions are different from ours.

So this is a process that's going to move along here. We're going to continue to try to encourage the majority here in the Congress to incorporate a number of our ideas. And when the measure's on the floor next week, as you know, we have a new Senate now in which amendments are offered and voted on. We will have a number of suggestions to make to the stimulus package that is married up after it comes out of Appropriations and Finance that we think it will -- that will improve the measure and make it truly timely, targeted and temporary, which I think was the goal of the new president.

Q Senator McConnell, as it currently stands, can you support the bill in its current form? And if not, what do you -- what needs to change about it?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, that's a question none of us need to answer, because the bill as it currently stands has not been seen by anybody yet. This is a process of developing a final product out of these two committees which will then go to the floor and then amendments will be offered. And I think the only way I could respond to your question is we'll see what it looks like when we get to the final voting.

Q Senator McConnell, do you think that Republicans are shut out of the process, or is there a true bipartisan spirit?

SEN. MCCONNELL: I don't want to get into complaints today. I know that we're going to have an open amendment process on the floor. I gather there is not a whole lot of enthusiasm for that in committee, but I'm not going to prejudge the process, because I'm pleased with the way the Senate's been operating on the floor, pleased that we're getting our amendments offered, laid down and voted on. And my assumption is that that's the way we're going to operate the rest of this Congress.

Q Do you think that President Obama has been a good influence on the Democratic leadership in Congress?

SEN. MCCONNELL: (Laughs.) You'll have to ask them.

Q In your relations with them, have they --

SEN. MCCONNELL: No, I think everybody on our side is certainly pleased with the level of interaction we've had with the new administration, not only the president himself, who's been very available, but also the people who work for him.

So thank you very much.

Q Thank you, Senator.

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