WASHINGTON, DC - U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday regarding President’s address to the nation and the Obama administration’s response to the Gulf oil spill:

“Last night the President provided more detail on his administration’s efforts to stop the oil spill in the Gulf. If implemented successfully, some of what he said was encouraging. 

“However, I wish the President would have used this opportunity to focus entirely on stopping the spill and to cleaning it up instead of using this crisis as an opportunity to push for a new national energy tax.

“The immediate issue here is a broken pipe that’s been spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil a day into the ocean for more than eight weeks. And the fact that the White House wants to use this crisis as an excuse to push more of its legislative agenda on the American people with the same kind of arguments it used to push health care is really nothing short of startling. 

“During the health care debate, Americans were told we couldn’t afford to put off the administration’s vision of a government-driven reform. Health care costs were rising so quickly, the President said, that inaction wasn’t an option. We heard the same thing last night.

“It’s a recurring theme out of this White House. In the middle of a jobs crisis, Americans were told they needed to spend nearly a trillion dollars on long-standing Democrat priorities that Democrats called a Stimulus bill. They passed it, and we lost another three million jobs. 

“Out of control health care costs are pricing people out of the market and threatening to bankrupt government, so they passed a massive government-driven health care bill that promises to send health care costs even higher than they already are.

“Our financial crisis was caused in large part by recklessness at government-sponsored entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and their solution to that crisis was to pass a massive government intrusion into Main Street without even addressing Fannie or Freddie. 

“And now, in the midst of the worst environmental catastrophe in American history, they’re talking about a new national energy tax to achieve their ideological goal of passing global warming legislation. 

“Americans are pleading with the administration to fix the immediate problem in the Gulf, and the White House want to give us a new national energy tax instead.

“Every time we face a crisis, it seems, this administration takes us on another ideological tour of the far-left to-do list, when all the American people want from it are some straightforward practical solutions.

“So the White House may view this oil spill as an opportunity to push its agenda in Washington, but Americans or more concerned about what it plans to do to solve the crisis in the Gulf.

“Americans have had enough of the crisis rhetoric coming out of this White House. They want real answers to real problems. And it doesn’t get more real than the problem in the Gulf.”

 

####