It’s unsettling that senior Democrats have lauded Judge Jackson for the, ‘empathy’ they suggest shapes her judicial approach, if you’re the litigant for whom a judge has special preexisting empathy, well, it’s your lucky day. But the other party is being denied their fair day in court.

Mitch McConnell

I think it is to the advantage of my state to have the opportunity to come to meetings occasionally and to vote in person, rather than just by proxy.

Mitch McConnell

vote opportunity thinking

We're certainly gonna keep our commitment to the American people to make every effort we can to repeal [Obamacare].

Mitch McConnell

obamacare people commitment

Public disclosure of campaign contributions and spending should be expedited so voters can judge for themselves what is appropriate.

Mitch McConnell

voters campaigns judging

We hear the stories every day now: the father who puts on a suit every morning and leaves the house so his daughter doesn't know he lost his job, the recent college grad facing up to the painful reality that the only door that's open to her after four years of study and a pile of debt is her parents'. These are the faces of the Obama economy.

Mitch McConnell

daughter mother morning

Where we are now is we have resolved the revenue issue and the question is what are we going to do about spending. I wish the president would lead us in this discussion rather than putting himself in a position of having to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table to discuss the single biggest issue confronting our future.

Mitch McConnell

issues president wish

While other state governments stiff their vendors, close parks, delay tax refunds, and ignore unacceptably poor service levels, Indiana state employees are setting national standards for efficiency.

Mitch McConnell

delay levels government

Sometime in the near future we'll have a vote on repealing Obamacare, essentially the same vote that we had in 2015. I would remind everyone that in that proposal there's a two-year delay, a two-year delay which would give us the opportunity to work out a complete replacement on a bipartisan basis with our Democratic friends.

Mitch McConnell

work-out opportunity giving

I think there were two messages in last year's election. One is pretty obvious. People were mad as hell at the president [Barack Obama] - and wanted to send a message. We all got that. Our new members were also hearing, and I was hearing as well, that people didn't like the fact that the Congress was dysfunctional. Now they may have been confused about where the dysfunctionality was cause the president kept pointing to the House. Factually, that's not accurate. The dysfunction was in the Senate.

Mitch McConnell

confused years thinking

If you believe one of the biggest problems confronting the country is overregulation by this administration, the single most effective way to begin to rein in the aggressive regulators, who in my view have done great damage to this economy, is in the bills that fund the regulators.

Mitch McConnell

views believe country

I think it's not just Republicans who would like to see the Senate run differently. I think there are a reasonable number of Democrats as well.

Mitch McConnell

running numbers thinking

79 senators, including that great conservative Elizabeth Warren, said they didn't like the medical device tax, so we will go at that law - which in my view is the single worst piece of legislation passed in the last half century - in every way that we can.

Mitch McConnell

pieces views law

It is a statement to the obvious, however, that [Barack] Obama - of Obamacare - is the President of the United States, so I don't want people to have [unrealistic] expectations about what may actually become law with Obama - of Obamacare - in the White House. But we intend to keep our commitment to the American people.

Mitch McConnell

obamacare law commitment

We certainly will have a vote on proceeding to a bill to repeal Obamacare... it was a very large issue in the campaign. And, the reconciliation process does present an opportunity and we're reviewing that to see what's possible through reconciliation.

Mitch McConnell

obamacare issues opportunity

What happens in committee if the committee functions, more often than not, not every time but more often than not, a bill comes out with bipartisan support.

Mitch McConnell

function bills support

What I said to the members [of Congress] who hoped they would be chairmen: let's don't have that problem. Be thinking now about legislation that you have, preferably that enjoys some Democratic support because we certainly didn't think we were going to have 60 and we don't.

Mitch McConnell

support would-be thinking

The classic example I've used - I'm sure you've heard me say it before - was Mark Begich in Alaska who was here for a full six years and never had a roll call vote on an amendment on the floor of the Senate, which Dan Sullivan tells me he used on virtually a daily basis. So the notion that protecting all of your members from votes is a good idea politically, I think, has been pretty much disproved by the recent [Barack Obama] election.

Mitch McConnell

alaska years thinking

I know how it feels when you're coming into a new situation, that the other guys won the election.

Mitch McConnell

election situation guy

Syria and Iran have always had a pretty tight relationship, and it looks to me like they just cooked up a press release to put out to sort of restate the obvious. They're both problem countries; we know that. And this doesn't change anything.

Mitch McConnell

iran change country

It's a shame that the president doesn't embrace the effort to reduce spending. None of us like using situations like the sequester or the debt ceiling or the operation of government to try to engage the president to deal with this.

Mitch McConnell

effort government trying

A reporter asked recently, 'What keeps you up at night?' I replied that I generally sleep well, but if I ever do have trouble, I don't have to count sheep. I count all the states I'm glad I'm not the governor of.

Mitch McConnell

sheep sleep night