Senate Legislative Agenda

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, this anniversary also reminds us of how many urgent issues are crying out for substantive, bipartisan, bicameral cooperation for the good of the American people.

I am talking about funding our Armed Forces and the Department of Defense, just as both sides agreed to do back in the summer when we signed on to a bipartisan, bicameral budget agreement that Democrats have lately sort of wandered away from--just wandered right away from it.

I am talking about passing the USMCA, the most consequential update to North American trade policy in a generation, which Speaker Pelosi has put on ice in order to move Democrats' impeachment obsession to the front burner, despite the fact that there are 176,000 new American jobs on the line if we pass the USMCA.

The needs of the American people have not been put on pause just because Washington Democrats have decided it doesn't suit them to get along with the White House.

My friends in Democratic leadership insist over and over that their focus on undoing the 2016 election will not keep them from the substantive legislation that American families need. Well, our Armed Forces are still waiting for their funding; our workers and small businesses are still waiting on their new trade agreement.

Our Senate Democratic colleagues have enough time to push partisan resolutions, such as their effort yesterday to enact a new tax cut-- listen to this--their effort yesterday to enact a new tax cut for wealthy people in blue States, like New York and New Jersey, at the expense of working families everywhere else.

But so far we have seen little--little--indication that they are really ready to put our differences aside and come to the table on significant bipartisan subjects that can actually become law.

I worry that something like the landmark opioid package that we are celebrating today would not have moved through the Congress today, just one year later. I worry it would have been another victim of Democrats' decision to avoid working with Republicans and the White House on basically anything, to keep all of their focus trained on impeachment.

I hope I am mistaken. I hope we make real progress soon. The American people are waiting on us.

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