“No matter what a candidate for president may say during the campaign, once someone is sworn in, they are constrained by the Constitution – about what the Constitution allows and doesn’t allow, what the law allows and doesn’t allow.”
― Mitch McConnell
“We need to be honest with the public.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Only one thing can save this country, and that’s to get a handle on this deficit and debt issue.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Diplomacy is important, extremely important, and I don’t think these reductions at the State Department are appropriate because many times diplomacy is a lot more effective – and cert cheaper – than military engagement.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Putin is a former KGB agent. He’s a thug. He was not elected in a way that most people would consider a credible election.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Trump was able to convey – oddly enough a message from a billionaire who lives in Manhattan – a genuine concern for people who felt kind of left off, who felt offended by all the political correctness they see around them.”
― Mitch McConnell
“It is time to move away from advise and obstruct and get back to advise and consent.”
― Mitch McConnell
“NATO is the most important military alliance in world history.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I ran for president of the student council at my high school in Louisville. And ran against a guy who I thought was better known and little bit better student and managed to win.”
― Mitch McConnell
“We’re not Democrats first. We’re not Republicans first. We’re Americans first. We’re patriots first.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The president feels not only do we need to change these rogue regimes, but even our friendly allies, who really basically have, sort of, benign dictatorships, need to get with the program if they want to have long-term security and prosperity from terrorism.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The fact is, if our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things.”
― Mitch McConnell
“We’re not gonna misread our mandate.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The Russians are clearly a big adversary, and they demonstrated it by trying to mess around in our election.”
― Mitch McConnell
“After adding trillions to the debt on big-government policies most Americans didn’t ask for and which we couldn’t afford, Democratic leaders say they need more money, which they intend to take from small business, even though small businesses create the majority of new jobs.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The border is way more porous than it should be, and I think we’d be open to discussing anything that enhances border security.”
― Mitch McConnell
“If the administration wants cooperation, it will have to begin to move in our direction.”
― Mitch McConnell
“If there’s any country in the world that doesn’t deserve sanctions relief, it’s Russia.”
― Mitch McConnell
“America is about to turn the page on Barack Obama’s four-year experiment in big government.”
― Mitch McConnell
“We’re a country of five-second sound bites and 30-second commercials. Eight years of one person is just too much.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The debt they ran up in the first year of the Obama administration is bigger than the last four years of the Bush combined.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I don’t want to sound like a whiner here, but if you get beat up all the time, it affects you.”
― Mitch McConnell
“No matter how unusual a personality may be who gets elected to office, there are constraints in this country. You don’t get to do anything you want to. So I’m very optimistic about America.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Bolton’s exactly what the U.N. needs at this point. The president’s right on the mark in picking him.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The Senate is allowed to work the way it was designed to – meaning a place where nothing is decided without a good dose of deliberation and debate, as well as input from both the majority and minority parties – it arrives at a result that is acceptable to people all along the political spectrum.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Are we still a country that takes risks, that innovates, that believes anything is possible? Or are we a country that is resigned to whatever liberty the government decides to dish out?”
― Mitch McConnell
“The greatest way to ensure stability in our laws is to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to participate in some way in the passage.”
― Mitch McConnell
“A reporter asked recently, ‘What keeps you up at night?’ I replied that I generally sleep well, but if I ever do have trouble, I don’t have to count sheep. I count all the states I’m glad I’m not the governor of.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Do we need to tighten restrictions on people coming into the country? I think there’s a good argument for that, but a kind of broad ban is a bad idea, and, of course, many American Muslims are great sources of information as we seek to look for domestic folks who might be engaged in trying to promote terrorist activities.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I don’t in any way think the American people rejected the Republican Party, or we’d be in a lot worse shape than we are.”
― Mitch McConnell
“My wife came here at age 8 not speaking a word of English and ended up in the president’s Cabinet.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I always think a debt ceiling is a good tool to carry something.”
― Mitch McConnell
“It is a president’s constitutional right to nominate a Supreme Court justice, and it is the Senate’s constitutional right to act as a check on a president and withhold its consent.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The American people gave us a new majority in 2014.”
― Mitch McConnell
“As I’ve said repeatedly over the last few years, the war on coal was not a result of anything Congress passed; there was no legislation.”
― Mitch McConnell
“We need to strengthen and save Social Security for today’s workers. If we don’t act now, this system, born out of the New Deal, will become a bad deal.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I think the important thing to remember here is that we haven’t been attacked again at home since September of 2001.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The country is yearning for a change. I’d rather take my chances on somebody new, particularly with regard to the Supreme Court.”
― Mitch McConnell
“We all know that Social Security is one of this country’s greatest success stories in the 20th century.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I think it’s a big mistake for our party to write off Latino Americans. They’re an important part of our country.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I only talk to the press if it’s to my advantage.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The people who would call me an obstructionist overlook some inconvenient facts.”
― Mitch McConnell
“It took us in this country 11 years to get from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution.”
― Mitch McConnell
“We did the two-year extension of Bush tax cuts in 2010. We negotiated the Budget Control Act in August of 2011 and the fiscal cliff deal at the end of 2012, which saved 99 percent of Americans from a tax increase.”
― Mitch McConnell
“More young people believe they’ll see a U.F.O. than that they’ll see their own Social Security benefits.”
― Mitch McConnell
“There is a lot of room for improvement in Social Security. We owe our children the most financially sound system possible. They will have paid into it their entire working lives. They deserve to be protected by it. for our children and grandchildren.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The money that goes into Social Security is not the government’s money. it’s your money. You paid for it.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Syria and Iran have always had a pretty tight relationship, and it looks to me like they just cooked up a press release to put out to sort of restate the obvious. They’re both problem countries; we know that. And this doesn’t change anything.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The new troops in Iraq need to be Iraqi troops.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Things happen in American politics in the political center. If the President will meet us in the center, there are things we can accomplish.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The administration still wants to govern from the far-left and that’s going to produce kind a partisan result here in the Congress.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Americans don’t think we should be raising taxes on anybody, especially in the middle of a recession.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The bill that job creators and out-of-work Americans need us to pass is the one that ensures taxes won’t go up – one that says Americans and small-business owners won’t get hit with more bad news at the end of the year.”
― Mitch McConnell
“It’s time Congress got its priorities straight.”
― Mitch McConnell
“By their own admission, leaders of the Republican Revolution of 1994 think their greatest mistake was overlooking the power of the veto. They gave the impression they were somehow in charge when they weren’t.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Today, Democrats not only have the White House; they have the Senate too. So we have to be realistic about what we can and cannot achieve, while at the same recognizing that realism should never be confused with capitulation.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The White House has a choice: They can change course, or they can double down on a vision of government that the American people have roundly rejected.”
― Mitch McConnell
“We’re living under the Obama economy. Any CEO in America with a record like this after three years on the job would be graciously shown the door. This president blames the managers instead. He blames the folks on the shop floor. He blames the weather.”
― Mitch McConnell
“While other state governments stiff their vendors, close parks, delay tax refunds, and ignore unacceptably poor service levels, Indiana state employees are setting national standards for efficiency.”
― Mitch McConnell
“And this year, when we end the cruel, defeatist practice of passing children who cannot read into fourth grade, and when our most diligent students begin to graduate from high school in 11 years, and get a head start on college costs with the dollars they earned through their hard work, others will take notice of Indiana yet again.”
― Mitch McConnell
“It just doesn’t occur to an American that someone else will solve their problems. Americans take pride in solving problems for themselves. And if we fail, we get back up and try again. It’s what we do. It’s who we are.”
― Mitch McConnell
“For four years, Barack Obama has been running from the nation’s problems. He hasn’t been working to earn reelection. He’s been working to earn a spot on the PGA tour.”
― Mitch McConnell
“To call this a recovery is an insult to recoveries.”
― Mitch McConnell
“We hear the stories every day now: the father who puts on a suit every morning and leaves the house so his daughter doesn’t know he lost his job, the recent college grad facing up to the painful reality that the only door that’s open to her after four years of study and a pile of debt is her parents’. These are the faces of the Obama economy.”
― Mitch McConnell
“It is time for a leader who will lead.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Mitt Romney has never been resigned to what someone else said was possible. He cut his own path. That’s why he believes in his heart that America has a future full of opportunity and hope. And that’s why when Mitt Romney looks down the road, he sees a country that’s ready for a comeback.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Mitt Romney has spent his entire life finding ways to solve problems.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Americans are too speedy.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I’m optimistic that none of my members in the end want to be responsible for the status quo on Obamacare.”
― Mitch McConnell
“America being a force is a lot more than building up the Defense Department.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The implication here is that those who came to America legally over the years are somehow second-class citizens.”
― Mitch McConnell
“We all got here from somewhere else going back in our lineage. And I think these gratuitous attacks on Americans who got here recently or whose parents got here recently need to stop.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I think we need to respect the wishes of voters. They have been busily at work making these decisions in primary after primary after primary.”
― Mitch McConnell
“My view is that Trump will not change the Republican Party, America’s right-of-center party. If he brings in new followers, that’s great, and well worth the effort, but he will not change the Republican Party.”
― Mitch McConnell
“My first memory in life was my last visit to Warm Springs.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Nurses told my mother that I was going to be OK. They thought I could walk without a limp and without a brace. And we stopped in a shoe store on the way home and bought a pair of low-top saddle Oxford shoes, which was sort of a symbol that I was going to be a normal little boy.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The Senate is not the sort of place where instant gratification, I should say, is very likely.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman.”
― Mitch McConnell
“My job is to try to protect jobs in Kentucky now, not speculate about science in the future.”
― Mitch McConnell
“What will happen is the bills will start out the way we like them; in order to move them – we’ll probably have to make compromises. That’s the way the legislative process works when it’s functioning.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I think we know enough now to know that Donald Trump is doing the same kinds of things that Jeb Bush would have done or Marco Rubio would have done or Mitt Romney would have done.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Don’t fall in love with the map. The map doesn’t win elections.”
― Mitch McConnell
“When you hang the ‘bipartisan’ tag on something, the perception is that differences have been worked out, and there’s a broad agreement that that’s the way forward.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I think that winning the White House is about more than just entertaining a large audience.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I don’t think it’s all that unusual for a new president to want to get along with the Russians. I remember George W. Bush having the same hope.”
― Mitch McConnell
“If the idea behind Obamacare was to get everyone covered, that’s one of the many failures.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I’m against lifting any sanctions on the Russians.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I think I’d like to be an owner of a Major League Baseball team.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Let me speak for myself: The Russians are not our friends.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I want to reassure our NATO allies that if any of them get attacked, we’ll be there to defend them.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Almost never does a candidate with high negatives have much of a coattail effect.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I thought the Pence selection ought to reassure the right-of-center voters that a Trump administration would be a right-of-center administration.”
― Mitch McConnell
“In the last 100 years, three presidents suffered big defeats in Congress in their first term and then won reelection: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and the most recent example, Bill Clinton.”
― Mitch McConnell
“After 1994, the public had the impression we Republicans overpromised and underdelivered.”
― Mitch McConnell
“We need to say to everyone on Election Day, ‘Those of you who helped make this a good day, you need to go out and help us finish the job.’”
― Mitch McConnell
“The country doesn’t need saving.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Back during the campaign, there were a lot of questions: Is Trump really a conservative? A lot of questions about it.”
― Mitch McConnell
“People are genuinely excited about taking the country in another direction.”
― Mitch McConnell
“A lot of us were wondering, what is Trump really going to be like? He used to support Democrats and have various views earlier in his life about politics.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I’m not going to comment on White House personnel selections.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I do think that the Constitution and the traditions of this country constrain all of us – those of us in Congress and those of us in the White House – from some of our impulses, shall I say, that we’d like to pursue.”
― Mitch McConnell
“We need to bear in mind that we don’t have religious tests in this country, and we also need to remember that some of our best allies in the war against Islamic terrorism are Muslims.”
― Mitch McConnell
“President Obama had two Supreme Court nominees in his first term. There was no filibuster against them.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I don’t think there should be a litmus test on judges, no matter who the president is.”
― Mitch McConnell
“What I have said is, when the American people elect divided government, what are they saying? I think they’re saying we know you have differences of opinion on big things.”
― Mitch McConnell
“You know, ‘Professor Obama’ has been a label applied to him by Republicans and Democrats alike. He’s a very smart guy. But I think he’d be, you know, better served not to spend so much time trying to impress us with his particular position on an issue and understand that there are things upon which we simply have a disagreement.”
― Mitch McConnell
“America’s a land of second opportunities.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Everybody has barriers to overcome, some more than others. I don’t want to act like I’m all that unique. America’s full of stories like mine. This is a special country with enormous opportunity for those who don’t quit.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I just want to remind everybody that this is an extraordinarily resilient country we live in.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I don’t think there is any equivalency between the way the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I’m not going to critique every utterance of the president.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I hope in the end that people will remember what Reagan said: that if he could get 80 percent of what he wanted, you call it a win and move on.”
― Mitch McConnell
“As President Obama reminded us, we’re all on one team.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Some contend that, by fulfilling our promise to the American people, we’re somehow trying to go back to the way things were before ObamaCare – which we all know is untrue.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Almost without exception, President Obama begins serious policy discussions by explaining why everyone else is wrong. After he assigns straw men to your views, he enthusiastically attempts to knock them down with a theatrically earnest re-litigation of what you’ve missed about his brilliance.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Personally criticizing a member of my staff hardly seemed like the way to negotiate a deal.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The majority in the Senate is prepared to restore the Senate’s traditions and precedents to ensure that regardless of party, any president’s judicial nominees, after full and fair debate, receive a simple up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I think it’s a time to be sad about what’s been done to the United States Senate, the greatest deliberative body in the world.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The Frist fairness rule guarantees up-or-down votes for every circuit court or Supreme Court nomination, regardless of which party controls the Senate or the White House.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I certainly would like to see the war on coal come to an end.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Our nation has a regrettable history of drawing down our forces and readiness after each conflict, only to find ourselve ill-prepared for the next great struggle.”
― Mitch McConnell
“I try to appeal to all Kentucky voters, regardless of gender, about the future of state.”
― Mitch McConnell
“So in the House and Senate, we own the budget. So what does that mean? That means that we can pass the spending bill.”
― Mitch McConnell
“The worst day of my political life was when President George W. Bush signed McCain-Feingold into law in the early part of his first administration.”
― Mitch McConnell
“You can give to Americans for Prosperity or something else – a variety of different ways to push back against the party of government.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Bills should go through committee.”
― Mitch McConnell
“Our friends on the other side decided early on they didn’t want to engage with us in a serious way, a serious way to help those suffering under Obamacare.”
― Mitch McConnell
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