FOX "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace" - Transcript: Upcoming Senate Elections

Interview

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WALLACE: President Obama has had a rough start to his second term but congressional Republicans are held in even lower esteem by the public.

Joining us to talk about the GOP plan for country is the Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Senator, welcome back to "Fox News Sunday"."

MCCONNELL: Glad to be here, Chris.

WALLACE: You just heard the president's senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer talk about the president's agenda, what he wants to accomplish through Congress or as he says increasingly, through executive order, working around Congress. Your reaction?

MCCONNELL: Well, we're in the sixth year of the Obama economy -- more spending, more borrowing, more debt, more regulation.

As was pointed out in your first segment, median household income down $2,300 a year during this period, family poverty statistics at the highest level since the statistics have been kept. I think it's time to go in a different direction. And there are some job creating steps that he could take right now, he could approve the Keystone pipeline. He could work with us on trade agreements.

Our party is much more interested in global trade than the Democrats are. If he would convince his own members, we can do some business on trade. He ought to stop things like the war on coal in my state which have cost us 5,000 jobs during his administration.

WALLACE: What do you think about this idea well this Congress is just impossible, I'm going to do more through executive action?

MCCONNELL: You know, Ronald Reagan didn't think that and Bill Clinton didn't think that. Frequently, times of divided government are quite good times in term of achieving things for the American people.

This president, it seems to me, after the 2010 election when the American public issued a -- shall we say -- restraining order, the president has sort of hung out on the left and tried to get what he wants through the bureaucracy as opposed to moving to the political center. The kinds of things that I just outlined, Chris, were things we could do with it.

We're anxious to help him create jobs. But we're not going to go over and endorse more spending, more debt, more taxes and more regulation.

WALLACE: Let's talk about two issues directly related to the president's theme of income inequality. One of them is unemployment benefits. More than a million Americans have lost their unemployment benefits since they ran out in December. Senate Republicans are saying, one -- not unreasonably -- you have to pay for it if you're going to spend the money. You ought to find a way to pay for it. You also want to offer a bunch of amendments.

Isn't that precisely the kind of thing that makes your party look hard-hearted and uncaring?

MCCONNELL: I don't think so. I mean, you know how many Republican roll call votes we've had since last July? Four. The majority leader is using a device only occasionally used by previous majority leaders of both parties to prevent us from even offering our ideas. That's why the Senate has been so dysfunctional over the last six months and even actually prior to that.

Look, it's not inappropriate to have amendments. That's what we come to the Senate to do. To offer amendments and suggestions.

With regard to unemployment, we're open to discussing that. We do think, as you suggested in your question, that we ought not to add it to the national debt which is now as big as our economy, which makes it look a lot like a Western European country. Surely in a $3 trillion annual expenditure, we can find a place to pay for extended unemployment insurance. This is something we ought to be able to work out.

WALLACE: The president also wants and I'm sure he'll call for it on Tuesday, to raise the minimum wage $10.10 an hour over three years.

MCCONNELL: Yes.

WALLACE: Doesn't it make sense, isn't it reasonable that somebody who's working full time, 40 hours a week, should be able to live above the poverty line?

MCCONNELL: Yes. But, of course, the minimum wage is mostly an entry level wage for young people. We have a crisis in employment among young people right now, and generation 18 to 30, people that got out of college, are finding there are no jobs for them. The last thing we want to do is have even fewer jobs for younger people.

MCCONNELL: There's no question that the minimum wage increase, if not done in conjunction with some kind of incentives for the businesses not to lay off employees are going to dramatically increase unemployment. I don't think in this jobless recovery, we ought to be doing things that creates fewer jobs. We ought to be doing things that create more jobs.

WALLACE: You heard, as you were coming in, my discussion with Dan Pfeiffer about raising the debt limit. After the government shutdown in October, which Republicans took the hit for, you were quoted as saying, "We are not going to threaten default again by attaching conditions." But more recently, you said you don't think there's any chance that a clean, without any condition debt bill could get through the Senate.

So, which is it?

MCCONNELL: Well, those statements are not inconsistent. I mean, some of the most significant legislation passed in the last 50 years have been in conjunction with the debt ceiling, Congressional Review Act, the Clinton and Republican Congress deficit reduction package in the late '90s that led to three years in a row of balanced budgets, the Budget Control Act we just did in 2011.

I think for the president to ask for a clean debt ceiling when we have the debt the size of our economy is irresponsible.

So, we ought to discuss adding something to his request to raise the debt ceiling that does something about the debt or produces at least something positive for our country.

WALLACE: But you just heard Dan Pfeiffer say the president is where he is and he's not going to bargain. He's not going to put something on the debt limit. The fact is, and, you know, they talk about the definition of insanity of doing the same thing over and over again --

MCCONNELL: Yes.

WALLACE: -- and expecting different result. When you get in these crises, whether it's a government shutdown or a possible default, the public tends to side with the president at a time when the president's numbers are low and you've got ObamaCare creating a lot of concerns about this president, you really want to get in a fight over the debt limit?

MCCONNELL: What we want to do is try to accomplish something for the country and I think the president -- any president's request to raise the debt ceiling, whether this one or previous presidents, is a good opportunity to try to do something about the debt. I think the president is taking an unreasonable position to suggest that we ought to treat his request to raise the debt ceiling like some kind of motherhood resolution that everybody says aye and we don't do anything, when we have the stagnant economy and this massive debt created under his administration.

WALLACE: So, are you saying right here, we are going to attach something to the debt ceiling? And if so, what?

MCCONNELL: What I'm saying is we ought to attach something significant for the country to his request to increase the debt ceiling. That's been the pattern for 50 years going back to the Eisenhower administration.

I think it's the responsible thing to do for the country. I think he's the one being irresponsible by saying oh, just raise the debt ceiling. We're not going to do anything about the debt or anything else that's important to the country.

WALLACE: Any specific idea?

MCCONNELL: Keystone Pipeline, a good example of something that would create jobs for the American people. The House of Representatives will initiate the discussion on the debt ceiling increase. They probably will have other ideas.

WALLACE: How about banning any bailout, this -- affecting the risk corridors on ObamaCare?

MCCONNELL: All of those would be important steps in the right direction. We need not have a default -- we're never going to default. The speaker and I made that clear. We've never done that.

But it's irresponsible not to use the discussion, the request of the president to raise the debt ceiling, to try to accomplish something for the country.

WALLACE: I know you like being Senate minority leader. I know you would even prefer to be Senate majority leader. So, let's talk about the playing field for the November election in 2014.

Democrats now have a 55-45 seat advantage. But the Democrats must defend 21 seats in November, while Republicans defend 15.

How do you pick up a net of six seats which is what you're going to need? A net of six seats, when you -- there are a number of Tea Party challengers who could win primaries, even unseat incumbents, but then be too conservative, and too unelectable when it comes to November?

MCCONNELL: Well, you touch on an important point. In order to win in November, you have to have an electable candidate. I'm very confident in every single place where we have an opportunity for a pickup, we're going to have a very electable candidate, not just in the primary but in the general as well, in West Virginia, in North Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Dakota, Alaska, Montana, Michigan -- all of those states we have very good candidates who can win elections.

And, Chris, the atmosphere for us is so good that we're also stretching the playing field. We expect to be competitive in places like Minnesota and New Hampshire and Colorado.

So, I think it could be a very good year. Historically, the six year of a two-term presidency is not very good to the party of the president. And we believe that coupled with the fact that locations of the races are very red states, seven of those states that I mentioned, Mitt Romney carried six of the seven and carried by double digits.

WALLACE: OK, let's talk message. We've got a question on Facebook from a fellow named David Imgrund, and here it is. "Democratic bashing only appeals to your base. What is the docket to reach out to the undecideds and across the aisle?"

Tell David briefly the positives GOP agenda.

MCCONNELL: Look, we believe that the American people will understand by this fall that we are the party of the private sector. You know, we tried big government now for six years in a row. We know that doesn't work. We've had a tutorial, an experiment with spending and borrowing and taxing and regulating.

I think the American people are now, surveys indicate, very skeptical of all of the government solutions the president continues to offer. And we're going to make the point that let's try the private sector for a while. Let's make it easy to create jobs and opportunities for our people. The government is not going to get that job done. We've seen that.

WALLACE: All right. Final question, you face, we talk about Tea Party challenges. You face your own Tea Party challenge in Kentucky this spring. A fellow businessman named Matt Bevin who has a web ad up, here it is.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS, POLITICAL AD)

WALLACE: I like the music.

What do you make of him?

MCCONNELL: Look, I don't own the nomination of my party or the seat that the people of Kentucky have given me, and I fully intend to win my primary. I mean, he's making the argument that I'm somehow an Obama enabler. I'm sure the White House is snickering at that and Republican voters in Kentucky don't believe that for a minute.

WALLACE: Let me ask you specifically about that, because he and conservative groups say, look, you have voted repeatedly to raise the debt ceiling. You voted for the Wall Street bailout. So, you are not a true conservative.

MCCONNELL: I was one of five U.S. senators last year that got a perfect rating from the American Conservative Union. The argument that I'm some kind of liberal is absurd and that will be rejected by the Republican primary voters in Kentucky on May the 20th.

WALLACE: Senator McConnell, thank you.. Thanks for coming in today. Always a pleasure to talk with you, sir.

MCCONNELL: Thank you.

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