Mitch McConnell makes bold prediction on Biden's presidency

leader mitch mcconnell spent some time in the oval office today with congressional leadership and an attempt to find some common ground with president biden the minority leader of the senate mcconnell joins us now to discuss senator thanks for coming back to special report yeah glad to be with you brett tell us about that meeting how do you describe it what would you take from me well no staff in there just the six of us the vice president was there we had a very cordial meeting for about an hour and a half and discussed an issue upon which there's a great chance we could get a bipartisan outcome and that's infrastructure i did make clear to the president that we're not willing to go back and raise taxes that is undo the 2017 comprehensive tax reform bill which brought us the best economy in in a long time as a february 2020 i think they know that that seemed to me to be accepted so we need to discuss how big a bill and how we're going to pay for it but not not by raising taxes so did you lay a market down i mean are you up to 800 billion now well i don't know where will i think the amount ought to be defined by the scope and we may have some differences about how you define infrastructure i mean we think through tradition uh traditional infrastructure roads bridges ports water lines broadband are things we can agree on to the extent that they start getting off in rather exotic definitions of what amounts to infrastructure we could have a problem but i think the takeaway from the meeting brett is that i think both sides would like to get an outcome right well you had some of your members go up and try to negotiate on the coveted stimulus early on and they came away saying it was a good meeting but then nothing transpired i mean do you feel like this is a different effort after that oval office meeting i do i think i think they want a deal this time and i think they want a deal with us because i don't think they think they can pass this second effort through a reconciliation package in other words i don't think they can get their own ducks in a row and so they're coming to us and that's generally how you reach bipartisan agreements plus the subject matter is pretty popular on both sides of the aisle yeah so you'd agree to a separate package maybe that meets your requirements knowing that democrats would use or try to reconciliation for the other parts of the spending and the family plan that they've talked about well they're in the majority they don't need my permission to decide how they want to pursue something but we talked today about a bipartisan infrastructure plan that would require our involvement in negotiation i think we've got a good chance of getting there on that issue whether they'll try another reconciliation on some other subject is really up to them all right uh rare to have the senate majority leader and minority leader in a markup at a committee hearing but this is over s1 take a listen all across the country republicans no longer want to let the voters pick their politicians they want to let politicians pick their voters deliberately targeting all the ways that younger poorer and non-white americans typically access the ballot you fought back against that in that hearing where does this stand and what's your take on the democrats pitch what the democratic leader just said is utter nonsense what their bill is about is a partisan takeover of how we conduct elections in this country it passed on a totally partisan basis in the house the last time we passed a major election reform bill 20 years ago chris dodd and i did it it was passed with 90 votes so this has nothing whatsoever to do with anything other than a democratic takeover let me give an example number one they would take the federal election commission which is currently three to three to provide neither side from taking advantage of the other and turn it into three to two with the president getting to appoint the tiebreaker so the democrats would be in charge of enforcing the rules terrible terrible idea nothing bipartisan about that secondly they want to take public money public money and provide it to politicians to run their campaigns so that public money is used to pay for attack ads and buttons and bumper stickers and actually whether individual voters support the candidate or not their tax dollars would be going to support them so you're saying it's not going anywhere no it's not going anywhere and there's nothing uh look it's a solution in search of a problem we had rapid incredible turnout last year dramatically up the highest turnout since 1900 a dramatically higher turnout than just four years ago nobody's votes are being suppressed anywhere across america in any of the states this is a bill that should not pass because it is a partisan takeover let me tell you one other thing they do before i lose my time here they make it almost impossible to have photo id at the polls that people are overwhelmingly in favor of the simple act of identifying who you are before you vote but you're you're arguing against it very vigorously but you don't think it has a chance no it's not going to pass the senate there's not a single republican for it senator manchin senator senem have made it clear they're not going to get rid of the legislative filibuster it would take 60 votes to pass this bill it will not pass all right i want to ask you about a couple more things the president says he does not believe that unemployment benefits and the extension of them are affecting the jobs numbers we just got word that the colonial pipeline is uh turned back on now and the gas shortages and uh the run on gas and these stations uh may come to an end soon where do you see the state of the country right now from your vantage point as senate minority leader i had a lot of meetings last week with businesses of all sizes including people running hospitals the single biggest complaint they had is they can't get people to come back to work and brett i know you've reported on your network that a number of states are saying to the federal government we don't want your plus up on top of unemployment insurance any longer because it's clearly a drag on getting people to come back to work it makes sense if you're making more money staying at home you'll choose just to stay at home secondly larry summers the treasury secretary under bill clinton and president obama's head of the council of economic advisers predicted back in january rampant inflation if we passed the rescue plan and flooded the country with with money that's exactly what's happening so every single business person i talk to regardless of size rapid rampant inflation and difficulty in getting people back to work uh congresswoman liz cheney ousted from her gop leadership position in the house uh this morning in a move uh pushed by house leaders was that a good decision look it's up to the house to make these kind of decisions we're moving ahead in the senate focusing on the current challenges we have with this new administration well you know when she survived a no-confidence vote in february you spoke out on her behalf you said liz cheney is a leader with deep convictions and the courage to act on them she is an important leader in our party in our nation and when we were asked about uh her at the press conference in kentucky uh you seem to go out of your way to avoid kind of expressing that support again uh saying 100 of my focus is stopping this new administration so why the change well there's no change i stand by what i said about liz cheney before i'm a great admirer of hers but as to who's supposed to be in the leadership in the house that's up to house republicans and entirely our focus is on dealing with this new administration i'm hopeful after today that we may be able to do some things on a bipartisan basis but they got off to a pretty hard left-wing start bills like the one we were talking about earlier that are in the rules committee there's nothing bipartisan about that uh this is a 50 50 senate we don't intend to participate in turning america into a left-wing kind of bernie sanders vision of what this country ought to be like congresswoman cheney said on the floor last night we face a threat america has never seen before a former president who provoked a violent attack on the capitol she went on to say in an effort to steal the election he's resumed his aggressive effort to convince americans that the election was stolen from him he risks inciting further violence is there anything that she said that you disagree with there i don't know how many times i have to tell you i'm focusing on dealing with the conditions we find ourselves in now with regard to the election i voted to certify the election i expressed myself on that issue on several different occasions several months ago but now we're in may and the issue is what can we agree on to do for the american people on a bipartisan basis and i hear you senator and with all due respect president trump the former president is not focusing on those things it doesn't seem he just put out a statement on monday claiming that michigan was stolen and might be overturned and he continues to kind of hammer republicans in different ways and a lot of republicans seem to be basing their 2022 strategy on the former president so i guess my question is can you move on like you're saying uh without dealing with the former president what he puts out day to day about the election your question is about what will the 22 elections be about if you look at american history the 22 election is very likely to be a referendum on the performance of the new administration bill clinton two years in lost the house and senate barack obama lost the house donald trump lost the house the first off-year election into a new administration will be a referendum on the performance of the biden administration if this administration continues to present a program that bernie sanders loves only bernie sanders could love this kind of program that will be what we debate in the fall of 22. all right i'm going to try one more time since april 24th fundraising emails from republicans have mentioned the former president 97 times an average of more than five times a day you're saying the focus is not on the past but you're using the former president's name and republicans are to raise money for 2022. well look each individual candidate is going to use whatever appeal they think works to try to raise money yeah i'm not in the money raising business i'm in the senate business and what we're trying to do here is to make some progress for the country i have one more thing 15 seconds how has president biden changed since you worked with him as vice president and senator from delaware i don't think he's changed i i liked the the president i liked him when he was in the senate we did some deals together i never thought he was a moderate and so i wasn't particularly surprised that this administration started off on the hard left the way they'll pivot is when they can't get enough votes to do things on their own and i think that's what we're seeing here with the good session that we had down at the white house today about an issue we can tackle on a bipartisan basis senator mcconnell we're always welcome back here on special report we appreciate the time thank you brett hey sean hannity here hey click here to subscribe to fox news youtube page and catch our hottest interviews and most compelling analysis you will not get it anywhere else

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Id: YP1fNZ5LqR0

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Wed May 12 2021