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.”