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WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor regarding the need for Senate Democrats to put partisan politics aside and agree on a bipartisan solution to rising student loan interest rates as well as consider the long-term political ramifications of implementing the nuclear option in the Senate:

“For more than a month, I’ve been coming to the floor to talk about student loan reform.

“I’ve said that, to the outside observer, this is an issue that should’ve been an easy bipartisan slam dunk.

“I’ve noted that the proposals put forward by both President Obama and Congressional Republicans have been strikingly similar – that we both agree on the need for a permanent reform, and that we agree on the need to help all students and not just some of them.

“Yet here we are, after the July 1st deadline. And Senate Democrats are still blocking bipartisan student loan reform. Why? Because they’ve prioritized politics over helping students.

“There are basically two different Democrat groups battling for supremacy here: a more responsible reform-permanently faction and a more political campaign-permanently faction.

“In the first group are the sensible Democrat Senators who agree with both President Obama and Republicans that it’s time to finally solve this issue – that Washington should actually help students and stop using them as pawns in a political chess match.

“They support the bipartisan compromise plan put forward by Democrat, Republican, and Independent Senators alike. Unfortunately, this faction is opposed and outnumbered by the campaign-permanently Democrats.

“They’re the ones who, I suspect, would actually prefer to see rates lapse so they can manufacture another campaign issue. And, to hear the public musings of some top Senate Democrats, you’d have to conclude that Democrat leadership is on the side of campaigning permanently and against helping students.

“As the Majority Leader put it a few weeks ago, ‘[We’re] not looking for compromise.’ Another Democrat Senator in leadership boasted that a goal in this debate was to show ‘the difference between the two parties on a key issue.’

“I mean, this is just the kind of thing that makes people so cynical about Washington.

“Washington Democrats yell and wave their arms about the need for something, and then they appear to do everything possible behind the scenes to sabotage it. Apparently so they can manufacture a politically convenient crisis. They’re doing it on student loans — and they’ve been doing it with nominations too.

“All week it seems they’ve been breathlessly telling any reporter who’ll listen that we’ve got a nominations crisis around here; that Republicans are holding up the President’s nominees.

“To hear some of the over-the-top rhetoric, you’d think Republicans had blocked all of the President’s second-term Cabinet nominees. But then, of course, you’d be wrong. Because the truth is, since the President swore his oath of office in January, the Senate has confirmed every single Cabinet pick that’s been brought up for a vote.

“Let me repeat that: Every. Single. One.

“Many of those nominees have been confirmed on unanimous or nearly unanimous votes, and just yesterday the Ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee announced his support for an up-or-down vote on Gina McCarthy’s nomination for EPA Administrator.

“So, it’s clear that facts are getting in the way of Democrats’ arguments. Which is why they’ve been forced to gin up this fake nominations ‘crisis.’

“It’s why we see them bringing out all the nominees who’ve been appointed to office illegally, or who are exceedingly controversial. Democrats themselves have delayed consideration of these nominees for months – that’s Democrats who did that – so they could pull all of them out of the woodwork, all at the same time, in the hopes the Senate would reject them.

“Democrats are out there just daring the Senate to do it. They want it so badly; it appears to be their goal. And there’s a reason for this. It’s because their Far-Left base seems to be getting fed up with the democratic process. The Big Labor bosses are sick of waiting for the special-interest legislative kickbacks they must feel they’re owed, and they know that altering the rules of our democracy is the only way to get what they want.

“Well, it won’t work. The facts show the truth. And the truth is that any ‘crisis’ over nominations is a crisis of Washington Democrats’ own making – one they’ve stirred up intentionally.

“As of last night, there were about 140 nominees pending in various committees. Those nominees are under the control of the Majority, not us. And there are a little over two dozen or so eligible for expedited floor consideration – many of whom Republicans have already said we’d pass unanimously. Why hasn’t the Majority Leader called for votes on any of those folks?

“Clearly, if anyone is obstructing here, it is the Majority Leader. Because this whole conversation isn’t really about making the Senate work better, and he knows it. It’s about grabbing power.

“Well, let me just caution him again to think long and hard about what he’s doing.

“As one of his most senior members said yesterday, deploying the nuclear option would mean ‘break[ing] the rules to change the rules.’ And as the Majority Leader once said himself, doing so would – and I quote – ‘ruin our country.’

“We all know why. Once the trigger is pulled, there would be no limit to the consequences. Not just for Republicans or for our country – but for Democrats too. They should think very carefully about what the ramifications will be for them when a future Republican President makes his own appointments to the Cabinet and the federal bench.

“Look: We know Senate Democrats are not serious about implementing student loan reform. They’ve already demonstrated that by blocking just about every bipartisan effort to do so. But on the nuclear option, I have to believe that cooler heads will prevail here.

“I have to believe they’ll choose the long-term health of our democracy – and of their party – over what, frankly, amounts to the narrowest of short-term political considerations.

“Pulling the nuclear trigger is not something the history books will look favorably upon. And they know it.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor regarding Senate Democrats proposing to break the rules to change the rules of the Senate at the request of Big Labor:

“Over the years, we’ve seen repeated instances of indifference to the rule of law on the part of this administration. It’s a consistent and worrisome pattern.

“The most recent example, of course, was last week’s announcement that the President had simply decided not to enforce a major piece of his health care law — until after the mid-term election. What the President was saying, in effect, was that if he doesn’t want to implement a law he’s signed, he doesn’t have to.

“Now, I agree it’s a terrible law. I understand why people harmed by it would want it changed. In fact, I think we ought to repeal it altogether and opt instead for real reforms that would actually lower costs. But the fact is, for now at least, it’s the law. And it is the President's constitutional duty to enforce the law. Yet, instead of fulfilling this basic duty of his office, the President seems to believe he gets to decide who is subject to the law, and who gets a pass.

“So last week, businesses had their Obamacare sentences delayed.

“Maybe next week it will be some other group. But it’s his call. He’ll decide what the law is. He did it with immigration. He did it with welfare work requirements. And he did it with the NLRB, when he took it upon himself to tell another branch of government when it was in recess. And now he’s doing it again with his own signature health care law.

“Imagine that the current occupant of the White House was not President Obama, but a Republican.

“Pretend that this Republican had come to office promising an era of inclusion and accountability, but, as the years wore on, had simply grown tired of the democratic process.

“Imagine that this President – despite securing confirmation for nearly every nominee he submitted – couldn’t understand why the elected Senate didn’t simply rush them all through even quicker. He couldn’t understand why Senators insisted on fulfilling their constitutional obligations to scrutinize each nominee.

“Just visualize for a moment that this President decided to urge Members of his party to break the rules of the Senate so that he could appoint whomever he wanted, regardless of checks and balances.

“Imagine the outrage: in the media, online, and especially on the other side of the aisle. They’d claim the President was a dictator. They’d say he was ripping the Constitution to shreds. Basically, everything they said for so many years about President Bush. But, of course, President Obama isn’t a Republican. And so, Washington Democrats seem fine with it.

“In fact, it appears they’re even ready to help this President – actually help him – in his partisan power grab.

“I know Washington Democrats are getting a lot of pressure from Big Labor union bosses and other Far-Left elements of their base to do this. These folks have told Democrats it’s time to pay up, and they don’t have much time for things like the democratic process or the rule of law.

“They raised a ton of money for Democrats, and now they want the special-interest treatment they believe is owed to them. That’s why we see the other side cooking up phony nomination fights — because they want to go nuclear, but they know the facts simply aren’t on their side to justify doing so.

“They know their core argument – that President Obama’s nominees are being treated less fairly than those of Bush – is essentially at odds with reality. They’ve gotten burned by fact-checkers already.

“President Obama’s nominees for Secretary of Transportation and Energy? Unanimously confirmed.

“Secretary of State? Confirmed.

“Treasury? Confirmed.

“Interior? Defense? Commerce? Check. Check. Check.

“Already in this Congress, the Senate has approved 27 of President Obama’s lifetime appointments.

“That compares to just 10 at a comparable point in President Bush’s second term.

“In other words, President Obama has just settled back into office, and already he’s secured nearly 3 times more comparable judicial confirmations.

“Look: to justify doing something as extreme as the Left wants, you’d better be prepared to make a rock-solid case. And this is the best they can come up with? That we need to change the rules of the Senate because Big Labor bosses say so? That the Left should be allowed to fundamentally change our democracy because the President is only getting nearly everything he wants rather than everything he wants at the exact moment he wants it?

“Let’s get real here. That’s not how a democracy functions.

“If this were a Republican President and the shoe were on the other foot, does anyone seriously believe that Washington Democrats would be going along with something so preposterous? Of course not.

“Remember, the current Majority Leader once said the nuclear option would ‘ruin our country,’ and a former Senator from Illinois named Obama said that if the Senate broke the rules to change the rules, ‘the fighting, the bitterness, and the gridlock [would] only get worse.’

“So what I’m saying to President Obama and his friends on the Far-Left is this: the facts show you’re getting treated pretty well on nominations as it is. But if you’d like more confirmed – if, for instance, you want the Senate to confirm your nominees to the NLRB – then don’t send us nominations that have already been declared illegal by the courts.

“We’ve already said that’s not going to happen.

“You know you can’t look Americans in the eye and say you’d vote for such a thing if you were in the minority. So don’t expect us to. But if you send us fresh picks, we’ll happily give them a fair hearing. Just as we’ve been doing all along.

“Because in America, we know that majorities of either party will never get everything they want. That push and pull is the hallmark of a healthy democracy. And one day, when they are invariably returned to the minority, I suspect my Democrat friends will thank us for standing up for these democratic rights.”

‘And while the White House seems to slowly be admitting what Americans already know, and what I hear consistently in my travels around Kentucky regarding the regulatory burden on employers, the fact remains that Obamacare needs to be repealed and replaced with common-sense reforms that actually lower costs for Americans.’

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