Press Conference With Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell; Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl; Senator John Ensign Following The Senate Policy Committee Luncheon

Press Conference

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SEN. MCCONNELL: (In progress) -- and the administration will be looking for a new nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Q Do any of the other -- you have any impressions about Senator Daschle? Did he do the right thing? Should he withdraw?

SEN. ENSIGN: I made some comments already, and I don't -- I don't mind adding to those. I think that there were some serious problems with Senator Daschle with his tax problems but also the fact that President Obama has said that he wants to stop the revolving door, that he doesn't want lobbyists as part of his administration. Well, I don't how you get paid $2 million by a lobbying firm and not call yourself a lobbyist. That just seems disingenuous to me and I don't think passes the smell test.

So I personally think that Senator Daschle, you know, was going to face some tough questions. And to stop an embarrassment from happening for this president -- I think he saved the president from being embarrassed next week in a public hearing.

Q Senator Kyl, you had a chance to talk to Senator Daschle about stuff. Was that meeting amicable? Did you get the sense that he would be withdrawing his name?

SEN. KYL: (Off mike.)

Q Would you come to microphone, please, Senator?

SEN. KYL: No, I don't really have anything more to say about that.

Q Leader McConnell, do these withdrawals of these nominations affect the ability of the president to seek solutions, to move his policies forward?

SEN. MCCONNELL: You all want to talk about nominations. We think the biggest issue of the week is not who's going to staff the administration but what we're going to do for the country's economy. And as we have said repeatedly, we need to fix housing first and then put more money in the hands of American taxpayers. And the amendments that we're going to be offering, which deal with the real problem -- not who's going to be the president's staff -- are what we hope to focus on this week.

Q (Off mike) -- a question. On the 4 percent for housing in the amendments you're talking about, do you have a sense that there's Democratic support for that? Some Democrats have said, well, there's going to be housing help and mortgage help in the TARP anyway. It was going to be there. Why do it now? We can make room for other things in the stimulus. What are you hearing from --

SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, it's Senator Ensign's proposal, but I'll just say, before the amendments are offered, I can't tell you how they're going to come out. But we're going to offer constructive alternatives.

Senator McCain has a proposal that I think will attract very many Republicans. Senator Ensign just described his. Senator DeMint has one.

We will have a number of different Republican proposals that we think would make a much better package -- and be targeted at the problem -- than squandering money on things, you know, like fixing up the Mall -- which has now been removed -- or spending money modernizing or sprucing up the Commerce Department. Senator Coburn has an amendment right now that will point out whether or not it's appropriate to be giving tax breaks to Hollywood movie producers in this particular environment.

So I think there's a lot of work to be done on this bill. We're going to have lots of amendments and lots of votes. I can't tell you in advance who's going to be where.

Q Senator -- (off mike) -- by blocking this big amendment this morning, or this afternoon, what signal did you send in blocking the 25 billion (dollars) that Democrats were trying to add to the bill?

SEN. MCCONNELL: (Chuckles.) I mean, it just expanded the size of it. I think most of my members feel that you can get the job done with a lot less than a trillion-dollar spending package. And so what we are hoping to do is to pare it down and target it right at the problem, rather than have it keep ballooning upward and upward and upward.

Someone said if you add in the interest we'd have to pay on this debt, it's really a $1.3 trillion package. And bear in mind, we all know we're likely to get additional requests for money related to the financial system. All kinds of hints are being heard that we're going to get yet another request. We haven't passed this year's omnibus appropriation yet. We need to sober up here, and take a look at what we're doing.

Everybody agrees that there ought to be a stimulus package. The question is how big, and what do we spend it on?

The House bill is an embarrassment. The Senate bill on the floor is not markedly better. Our goal will be to pare it down, and to target it right at the problem.

Q Senator, will the Republican tax amendments be offset, so that if adopted they wouldn't also make the package bigger?

SEN. MCCONNELL: I'm not going to get into the composition of each amendment, but I've given you the strategy for the amendments, and it'll play out in the course of the week.

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