Tagged: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

A delegation of activists representing several social justice groups in Kentucky visited the White House on Wednesday for a meeting on how to avoid the fiscal cliff.

The discussion was hosted by President Obama’s director of public engagement, and was organized to build support for his plan that includes raising taxes on the wealthy. Leaders from the Louisville NAACP, Fairness Campaign and Planned Parenthood of Kentucky attended the session, along with a delegation from Tennessee.

ACLU of Kentucky Executive Director Michael Aldridge also attended the meeting. He says going over the fiscal cliff will not only hurt the economy, but would set back civil liberties issues as well.

"When Congress is preoccupied with having to tend these budgetary concerns they’re not taking up a lot of civil liberties issues that we would like them to be focusing on such as immigration reform, which the Obama administration has stressed they’re going to be taking up in the second term," he says. "They’re not going to be able to move forward until they get their fiscal house in order."

Newly elected state Senator Morgan McGarvey, D-Louisville, lashes out a Senate Republican Mitch McConnell in a Courier-Journal editorial, saying the GOP leader is only interested in attaining more power.

McGarvey was defending Democratic Congressman John Yarmuth from McConnell biographer John David Dyche, who penned a stinging article comparing to a "yapping toy poodle" among other things. The Dyche article was in response to Yarmuth's cheerleading for a challenge to McConnell in 2014.

What's interesting about McGarvey's piece is that it acknowledges the origins of the Yarmuth-McConnell divide. Both men were once moderate Republican staffers who worked for former U.S. Senator Marlow Cook at the same time.

McGarvey says since then Yarmuth has become more liberal but taken principled stands while McConnell is only interested in accumulating more power.

From The C-J:

Unlike Yarmuth, and their former boss, McConnell’s career has not been forged in ideological fidelity, civil discourse or bipartisan cooperation.

Leading up to the fiscal cliff negotiations, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly reminded President Obama about his 24-point thumping in Kentucky in a private phone call.

The conversation typifies the icy relationship between McConnell and the president—the two have rarely met, spoken or been seen in public together.

As Politico reports, the GOP leader was warning Mr. Obama early to cool on the campaigning if he wants to make progress with lawmakers.

From Politico:

Don Stewart, McConnell’s chief spokesman, said McConnell’s comments to Obama “were in the context of trying to find a solution” to the budget crisis. The GOP leader told the president that continuing to engage in a public-relations blitz against Republicans “could have the opposite effect of what he was trying to accomplish,” the spokesman said.

Stewart added: "This, by the way, is sound advice."

The White House declined to comment.

For the third straight day Republican Leader Mitch McConnell defended his parties use of the filibuster while criticizing Democrat's push for an overhaul in Senate rules.

The filibuster is held by many as a Senate tradition that allows the minority party to hold up legislation, but Democrats argue that the GOP has abused the tool. The reforms are rather simple, but McConnell and Majority Leader Harry Reid have been jousting over the issue this week while the Democratic caucus is threatening to use the "nuclear option" that would allow a simple 51-vote majority to change the Senate rules.

Speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday, McConnell says he is willing to negotiate rule changes with Reid to reach an agreement. But in an editorial, the GOP leaders ratchets up his criticism that Democrats are threatening a tool that has been a safeguard for the political minority.

From U.S. News & World Report:

The majority leader was once a staunch defender of the Senate's protection of minority rights. Yet now that he finds himself frustrated he's prepared to recklessly throw those rules away and his own solemn pledge to defend them.