FOX "Your World" - Transcript

Interview

Copyright ©2009 by Federal News Service, Inc., Ste. 500, 1000 Vermont Ave, Washington, DC 20005 USA. Federal News Service is a private firm not affiliated with the federal government. No portion of this transcript may be copied, sold or retransmitted without the written authority of Federal News Service, Inc. Copyright is not claimed as to any part of the original work prepared by a United States government officer or employee as a part of that person's official duties. For information on subscribing to the FNS Internet Service at www.fednews.com, please email Carina Nyberg at cnyberg@fednews.com or call 1-202-216-2706.

MR. CAVUTO: Not a single Republican voted for the stimulus package in the House, President Obama pulling out all the stops to make sure that does not happen in the Senate. Will it (help ?)? Let us ask the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Senator, how's it looking in your house?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, I think if the Senate version, Neil, ends up looking anything like the House version, I expect it will, there will be very few if any Republicans supporting it over here as well.

MR. CAVUTO: The argument I get from the White House, Senator, is that if they get so much as one they can slap the bipartisan sticker on it. What do you say?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, the only bipartisanship I saw on display yesterday in the House was bipartisan opposition. There were 11 Democrats who voted against the package. Look, I give credit to the president for wanting to be bipartisan, and he's certainly been friendly and interactive in all of that, and we appreciate that. But at the end of the day, the way you get genuine bipartisanship is with serious Republican proposals included in the measure, and that didn't happen in the House. And I think it's highly unlikely to happen in the Senate.

MR. CAVUTO: All right. So the way things stand now, would you be surprised if any Republican senator voted for this?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, you know, they may get a couple. I don't know. I'm not going to predict the final outcome, but I think it's safe to say that if the Senate version looks like I think it's going to look there will be overwhelming Republican opposition in the Senate. And I don't think there will be any way to characterize it as a bipartisan success story in the Senate, either.

MR. CAVUTO: All right, because, you know, Democrats are pouncing on this Senator, as I'm sure you're well aware, as being sort of 1993 redux. That is, when Bill Clinton has his economic stimulus plan, not a single Republican vote. I believe it was Vice President Al Gore who was the tiebreaker. And that one went off okay. The argument was it started an economic boom. Plenty of other factors as we know in retrospect. But you could be repeating that and dooming Republicans. What do you say to that?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, I think the public is reacting, you know, in a very mixed sort of way to this particular package. I mean, no matter what you call it, it's looking like close to a $1 trillion spending bill. And a lot of it hardly passes the smell test, and the smell test I would apply to this is the one the speaker used last year. Is it timely, temporary and targeted? A good bit of this, Neil, is neither timely, nor temporary, nor targeted. In fact, there is $190 billion in entitlement spending increases in the House version. What that tells you is that will increase spending in the out years. There's nothing very temporary about that.

So a stimulus to make sense would be -- and most of us, including myself, think we need to do something -- would involve, you know, going right at the housing problem. Let's fix housing first. We have a proposal to do that. And secondly, let's put money back in the pockets of taxpayers immediately, you know, both individual taxpayers and businesses. That's the way to jump-start the economy, not engage in a whole bunch of government spending and do stuff like, you know, fixing up the Mall or, you know, working on ATV trails and that sort of thing. I mean, that, you know, doesn't pass the smell test.

MR. CAVUTO: Well, let me ask you then, there was one issue that came up earlier in the show, Senator. Maybe you know the mechanics of this, certainly you know the mechanics better than I do. As things stood now, illegal aliens could be getting tax rebate checks. Now we had a couple of Democrats who said, well, that's not the case, that loophole, if you call it that, is not there now. Do you know for sure whether that is there or that's a possibility?

SEN. MCCONNELL: I don't know for sure, but certainly we're going to be scrubbing the bill looking for those kinds of things. It just came out of the Senate committees yesterday.

MR. CAVUTO: Okay. To Rush Limbaugh, he's made a big deal and attacked Republicans for not being more vigilant on this and staying together. Quoting here, effectively talking about this, "that he's obviously more frightened of me than he is of Mitch McConnell" -- referring to the president -- "he's more frightened of this than he is, let's say, John Boehner, which really doesn't say much about our party." What do you make of those comments?

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, I talked to Rush yesterday. It was a very friendly conversation. I don't think he was putting down either John Boehner or me. I don't know how it was interpreted that way. But the major Democrats like to attack Rush Limbaugh. I think they think that is good for their base to hear. And frankly, I doubt if Rush objects to it either because it certainly heightens his influence and probably is good for listenership.

MR. CAVUTO: Well, did that come up when you met with the president when he came to Capitol Hill the other day?

SEN. MCCONNELL: No, he didn't mention it in the Capitol Hill meeting. But you know, I think it's been kind of traditional Democratic talk for years to take on Rush Limbaugh, which, as I said, their political left likes to hear, and I expect it's not bad for Rush either.

MR. CAVUTO: Okay, now back to you, Senator. As this bill now stands, for or against?

SEN. MCCONNELL: As I understand it's likely to be in the Senate, no, I'm not going to be for it. And I think the overwhelming majority of my members are not going to be for it. We don't think it's timely, temporary or targeted. And we think it's going to end up being largely an almost $1 trillion spending bill.

MR. CAVUTO: All right. Senator Mitch McConnell, always a pleasure. Thank you.

SEN. MCCONNELL: Thank you.

Source