President Joe Biden signaled on Wednesday that he wasn’t shaken by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) fervid pledge to fully dedicate himself to obstructing the administration’s agenda.
Biden pointed out during a Q&A with reporters that, as former President Barack Obama can attest, McConnell’s promise to go scorched-earth isn’t exactly brand new.
“Look, he said that in our last administration [with] Barack, [that] he was going to stop everything,” the President said. “And I was able to get a lot done with him.”
Biden also pushed back against McConnell and other Republicans’ complaint that his agenda, including the sweeping infrastructure plan, is too expensive.
“Look, everything I’m proposing that be done to generate economic growth, employment, and put us in a position where we can out-compete any other country in the world with research and development, and moving ahead, I pay for,” he said.
Earlier that day, McConnell told reporters that “one hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration.”
The Republican leader claimed that Biden “may have won the nomination” but Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-VT) “won the argument about what the new administration should be like.”
“We are confronted with severe challenges from the new administration and a narrow majority in the House and a 50-50 Senate to turn American into a socialist country, and that’s 100 percent of my focus,” McConnell said.
The GOP senator’s remarks recall his infamous declaration in 2010 that “the single most important thing” Republicans “want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
