Daily Caller - Darrell Issa: "We Have A Mandate To Pass Sensible Legislation'

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By Alex Pappas

"You know, I'm having a really superb night," California GOP Rep. Darrell Issa acknowledged late Tuesday, after it became apparent Republicans would win back control of the Senate.

Speaking to The Daily Caller by phone, the outgoing chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said the GOP victories mean the new Republican Congress will have a mandate to push their agenda.

"In a nutshell, and I'll sound a little bit like George Will, they didn't vote Republicans in tonight," Issa said of the country. "They voted the president out. And that means that we have a mandate to pass sensible legislation."

"Many of the pieces of legislation that we already passed out of the House with bipartisan support from the Democrats, those kinds of pieces of legislation, I think, are great examples," he said of agenda items for the Senate to vote on.

Issa, who earned national exposure as the face of Republican investigations into Obama administration scandals, said he would like to see the Senate take up legislation on everything from Iran to the Keystone pipeline to federal IT reform. "There are glaring mistakes that have happened in this administration that need to be corrected," he said.

Offering an explanation for why a number of incumbent Democratic senators lost Tuesday, Issa said: "I think it is very much an example where even when people didn't want to be seen with the president, they were still seen as being with the president."

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