“Maybe he’s slowed down a half step over the last couple years, but I don’t see any gross changes,” Senator Marshall told Vanity Fair. McConnell “just had a bad day” at the lectern on Wednesday, said Senator Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican, adding, “I’ve had a lot of bad days myself,” with a laugh.
Tuberville also noted, generally, “We all gotta know when enough’s enough…. He’s fine. He’ll make his own decision on that.”
Mitch McConnell’s staff was quick to swat down any chatter about the leader’s ability to serve. “Leader McConnell appreciates the continued support of his colleagues, and plans to serve his full term in the job they overwhelmingly elected him to do,” his office put out in a statement to the press.
But those in his conference are already thinking about who is next. “If and when the time comes, I’m interested,” says Thune, who currently serves as the Republican whip and led the conference when McConnell was absent for around five weeks after his fall in March. Thune was the first to step up to deliver remarks when McConnell was briefly taken away from the lectern last week.
It’s no secret who is in the running for McConnell’s successorship. “I think people who would be interested in his position are people who are in leadership today,” said Senator Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, name-dropping Thune, Barrasso, and Ernst. Texas Republican John Cornyn, who served as GOP whip from 2013 to 2019 and as a loyal McConnell ally, is also in the mix.
“The three Johns,” though, dominate the chatter of any post-McConnell order more than the two women on the leadership team—Ernst and conference vice chairman Shelley Moore Capito—or any possibility of a wild card in the conference, assumptions that bristle some Senate Republicans. “Wouldn’t it be great if it were a woman?” mused a senior GOP senator on the condition of anonymity. “I don’t think it’ll happen, but that would really be something if it were a woman,” the senator continued, a preference broadly echoed by at least two other women in the conference. “It’s all about who is interested in throwing their ideas into the mix and taking votes,” Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican, toldPolitico.
Last November, 10 Senate Republicans presented the first challenge to McConnell’s grip as Senate GOP leader by voting for Rick Scott of Florida who, along with Mike Lee of Utah, were reportedly stripped of their preferred committee assignments when McConnell eventually prevailed by a vote of 37 to 10. No one had ever voted against McConnell in leadership elections before. But the internal mutiny was more about politics than a belief McConnell was no longer fit to serve.
After failing to retake the Senate majority in last year’s midterm election, some Republican senators had seen enough. McConnell, who has carefully navigated Donald Trump’s insurgency in his own party, suddenly had challengers. “My criticisms following the last election loss are well known,” said Josh Hawley of Missouri, one of the 10 Senate Republicans who voted for Scott. “I think we need a different approach…but I don’t want that to be taken as a dig against his health, at all.” For now—at least publicly—most of McConnell’s possible successors demure at the idea. “I’m happy to wait,” Cornyn said when asked if the conference should be making plans for when McConnell is no longer leader. “I don’t know how much longer he will want to serve, but I support him as long as he wants the job.”
“McConnell is our leader,” laughed Barrasso, the senior senator from Wyoming, a seat he has held since 2007, when asked about the GOP leader’s eventual secession.
When I asked McConnell directly if he had anyone in mind to replace him some day, he laughed out loud. It was the last question during the now infamous Wednesday presser where McConnell froze live on air.
“I’m fine,” he said—a line he repeated until the Senate left Capitol Hill until September for a five-week recess.
The American political memory is short, but McConnell’s not up for reelection until 2026—plenty of time for him to become another Senate prizefighter who played the long game, maybe too long.
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell’s office released an update Tuesday about the 81-year-old Kentuckian’s health after he froze in front of cameras last week for the second time in as many months.
The note from Brian Monahan, the Capitol Hill attending physician, says there is no evidence of a stroke, seizure disorder or movement disorder like Parkinson’s disease. Read Monahan’s note below:
Watch CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju’s interview with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer this Sunday at 11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT on CNN’s “Inside Politics”.
CNN
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told CNN that his chamber might have to take matters in its own hands and push through a must-pass bill to fund the government amid deep divisions in the House and a looming shutdown by next weekend.
For weeks, Democratic and Republican senators have been watching the House with growing alarm as Speaker Kevin McCarthy has struggled to cobble together the votes to pass a short-term spending bill along party lines – all as he has resisted calls to cut a deal with Democrats to keep the government open until a longer-term deal can be reached. The initial plan: Let McCarthy get the votes to pass a bill first before the Senate changes it and sends it back to the House for a final round of votes and negotiations.
Now with House GOP leaders still struggling to get the votes ahead of the September 30 deadline, Schumer said he would try to cut a deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and send it to the House on the eve of a potential shutdown – all as he signaled he was pushing to include aid to Ukraine as part of the package.
“We may now have to go first … given the House,” Schumer told CNN in an interview in his office, moments before he took procedural steps to allow the Senate to take up a continuing resolution, or CR, as soon as next week. “Leader McConnell and I are talking and we have a great deal of agreement on many parts of this. It’s never easy to get a big bill, a CR bill done, but I am very, very optimistic that McConnell and I can find a way and get a large number of votes both Democratic and Republican in the Senate.”
If Schumer’s assessment is correct, that would leave McCarthy with a choice: Either ignore the Senate’s bill altogether or continue to try to pass his own bill in the narrowly divided House where he can only afford to lose four GOP members on any party-line vote.
But McCarthy could also be jammed by a bipartisan group of members who are openly threatening to sign a petition forcing a vote in the House – if they get 218 supporters – and circumvent the speaker altogether. At the moment, McCarthy is scrambling to resurrect his spending plans to try to move 11 year-long funding bills through his chamber – even though it typically takes months to hash out differences between the two chambers on spending legislation.
There’s now talk in House GOP circles about focusing solely on those long-term bills and abandoning a stop-gap resolution altogether, as hardliners threaten to tank it, and as GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida has vowed to seek McCarthy’s ouster as speaker if he pushes for such a Band-aid solution. But McCarthy indicated he’s still open to passing a Republican stop-gap bill, and he was non-committal on Friday on how he would handle a plan sent to him by the Senate.
It remains to be seen what will ultimately be included in the Senate’s plan. Schumer said in the interview “I hope so” when asked if he expected Ukraine funding to be included as the White House has pushed for $24 billion to aid the country in its war against Russia.
“Leader McConnell and I are both strongly for aid for Ukraine, and I believe the majority of the members of both parties in the Senate agree with that,” Schumer said.
But pushing such a plan quickly through the Senate will be difficult. Any one senator can slow down action in the Senate – and Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican – has vowed to battle a bill that provides money for Ukraine.
“I’ll object to sending any more money to Ukraine,” Paul told CNN on Thursday. “We don’t have any more money.”
Yet with the GOP divisions over how to proceed, frustration is growing in the ranks.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, a member of Senate GOP leadership, raised concerns about her party’s handling of the spending talks.
“I feel like we have control of the House – I don’t envy my good friend Kevin McCarthy’s position here – but I think we’re just showing that we don’t have any solutions,” Capito told CNN. “Stalemates and government shutdowns are not good solutions.”
Asked if she were concerned about the fallout of a shutdown, Capito said: “I do worry about that, the political backlash.”
Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota said Sunday that Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell is “perfectly capable” of carrying out his leadership position after he froze in public for the second time in as many months.
“There’s a lot of folks out there who would like to see him go, but that’s because he’s a very capable leader. He’s one of these kind of guys that if you can take him out of the leadership role in advance, you might end up in a better position if you were a competitor of his,” Rounds told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” adding that “on the Republican side, we all understand that he’s good, he’s good for our party.”
“At this stage of the game, I think he’ll continue on,” Rounds said.
The vote of confidence comes as McConnell moves behind the scenes to reassure his allies and donors he can do his job – even as questions persist over how long the 81-year-old Kentuckian will stay on as Republican leader.
McConnell appeared to freeze for about 30 seconds last week while speaking with reporters after a speech in Covington, Kentucky. The incident was similar to an episode McConnell experienced at the US Capitol in July.
After the second freeze-up, Dr. Brian Monahan, the attending doctor for the Capitol, said in a statement released through McConnell’s office that the GOP leader is cleared to continue his schedule.
“I have consulted with Leader McConnell and conferred with his neurology team. After evaluating yesterday’s incident, I have informed Leader McConnell that he is medically clear to continue with his schedule as planned,” the statement said.
“Occasional lightheadedness is not uncommon in concussion recovery and can also be expected as a result of dehydration,” added Monahan.
CNN contributor Scott Jennings, a longtime McConnell ally, said on “State of the Union” later Sunday he “watched football with (McConnell) Friday, he’s having a perfectly fine weekend, and looking forward to getting back to Washington.”
Still, the last freeze-up occurred right before senators left for a five-week August recess. Some at the time wanted more information about McConnell’s health, and such questions are bound to intensify next week when they return to session.
“Mitch is sharp, and he is shrewd. He understands what needs to be done,” Rounds said Sunday.
“I will leave it up to him as to how he wants to discuss that with American public. But there’s no doubt in my mind that he is perfectly capable of continuing on at this stage of the game. And he’s got a good team around him. He’s done a good job of developing that leadership team. They have been supportive of him.”
During a routine Wednesday press conference, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, 81, left tongues wagging after he froze mid-sentence for nearly thirty seconds before aides escorted him away from the microphones.
It was just the latest in a string of health-related incidents the senator has suffered this year, which marked the longest-ever tenure of a Senate leader. In March, after McConnell tripped and fell at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, he spent five days in the hospital and more than a week in a rehab facility dealing with a concussion and broken rib. All in all, he spent nearly six weeks away from the Senate.
Also of note: Just days before the March incident, McConnell stumbled and fell in the snow on his way to a meeting with the Finnish President in Helsinki, CNN reported Thursday. And late Wednesday night, NBC News reported that McConnell tripped and fell again earlier this month while disembarking from a plane in DC. Both of these stumbles had previously gone unreported.
When McConnell returned to the podium Wednesday, he dodged a question about whether the most recent episode was related to his concussion, simply saying he was “fine” and that he was able to continue fulfilling his duties. His reticence on the subject of his own health is hardly surprising: One Republican senator, speaking anonymously to NBC News, said that McConnell “doesn’t address” his medical issues even in closed-door GOP meetings.
But there’s reason to believe the incident might point to something more serious. Two neurologists who spoke to The New York Times after the incident said the two most likely causes of the episode were a partial seizure or a kind of mini-stroke called a “transient ischemic attack.” McConnell aides have declined to say whether he’d been examined by a doctor.
McConnell’s health issues underscore the challenges faced by a rapidly aging Senate. This spring, California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, who last month celebrated her 90th birthday, spent over two months away from her duties while recovering from a bout of shingles. At times, she has shown significant signs of possible cognitive impairment, leading to calls for her resignation.
The median age in the Senate is currently 65.3, up from 62.4 in 2017 and over seven years older than the median House age, which has fallen in recent years. More than half of the Senate’s Republicans are older than 65, compared to 46 percent of Senate Democrats. In the United States, the full retirement age is 67.
As for McConnell, a number of pro-Trump conservative media figures and activists, who have long despised the Senate minority leader, called for his immediate resignation Wednesday. But the Kentucky Senator laughed off a question about his potential replacement.
Still, the senator’s obvious frailty means that a retirement or retreat from Senate leadership is certainly a possibility. That scenario would likely touch off a three-way succession race between Senate Republican Whip John Thune, Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, and former Senate GOP whip John Cornyn. Barrasso, an orthopedic surgeon who helped escort McConnell back to his office on Wednesday, said the Senate GOP leader is “doing a great job leading our conference and was able to answer every question the press asked him today.” Cornyn likewise said Wednesday that he’d support McConnell “as long as he wants to remain as leader.”
Succession would be fairly simple in McConnell’s home state. In 2021, the GOP-dominated Kentucky legislature overrode Democratic Governor Andy Beshear’s veto to pass a law mandating that McConnell’s replacement would have to come from his own party. McConnell publicly supported the bill, which prompted speculation that he was planning on leaving the Senate before the end of his current term, which runs until 2027.
“I’m not going anywhere. I just got elected to a six-year term, and I’m still the leader of my party in the Senate,” McConnell said at the time. “So, this is a hypothetical. But I had watched this over the years in the Senate, as various vacancies were filled, and I thought this was the best way to go.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell froze during his opening remarks at the weekly Senate Republican press conference on Wednesday, seemingly unable to speak. Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, who is also a physician, approached him and spoke quietly with him, and the two walked away from the podium.
The top Senate Republican eventually returned to handle questions, but not before arousing the concern of his colleagues. A McConnell aide later said he “felt lightheaded and stepped away for a moment.”
McConnell, 81, was discussing the Senate’s progress on the National Defense Authorization Act when he ceased speaking. Barrasso asked him, “You OK, Mitch?” He asked if the Republican leader wanted to return to his office and helped McConnell away from the podium. Sen. John Thune, the second-highest ranking Republican in the Senate, took over the press conference.
Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appears to have a health issue while speaking during a press conference in the U.S. Capitol. About 12 minutes later, the Minority Leader returned to the press conference and, when asked about what happened, said, “I’m fine.” pic.twitter.com/EU7zDzGT0m
“You’re fine? You’re fully able to do your job,” a reporter asked.
“Yeah,” McConnell replied.
Briefly addressing reporters outside his office Wednesday night, McConnell disclosed that he received a call from President Biden.
“Well, the president called to check on me, and I told him I got sandbagged,” McConnell said. This was in reference to Mr. Biden having tripped over a sandbag while on stage for a commencement ceremony last month at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado.
When asked how he was feeling, he again responded, “I’m fine.”
Following the incident, Barrasso also said he went back to McConnell’s office to make sure he was OK, but believes McConnell is fine, since he returned and took questions. He said he had some concerns after McConnell’s fall, but the Senate minority leader continues to do a “great job” leading the conference.
“I’m a doctor, I’m just not his doctor,” Barrasso told reporters. “He answered questions, and he was fine.”
Still, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said he wants to know “what went wrong” at the press conference.
McConnell’s fellow Senate Republicans said he should remain the GOP leader.
McConnell, a polio survivor, has served in the Senate since 1985.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters that he’s “fine,” after freezing during a news conference on Wednesday.
McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, stopped speaking in the middle of remarks at his regularly scheduled weekly news conference on Capitol Hill. After a 30-second pause, his colleagues crowded around to see if he was OK and asked him how he felt. GOP Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming was seen gripping McConnell’s arm and whispered to him, “Hey Mitch, anything else you want to say? Or should we just go back to your office? Do you want to say anything else to the press?”
He said nothing, and was led away from the press conference and towards his office by an aide. He returned to the news conference a few minutes later.
McConnell, asked by CNN what happened and if it is related to his fall earlier this year, said “No, I’m fine,” and then moved on to other reporters.
A McConnell aide said that the senator “felt light headed and stepped away for a moment.”
“He came back to handle Q and A, which as everyone observed was sharp,” the aide said.
McConnell, 81, has faced questions over his health after suffering a concussion and broken ribs from a fall he endured earlier this year. He was hospitalized and forced to go to rehab for several weeks before returning to the Senate in the spring.
McConnell, who is up for reelection in 2026, has repeatedly declined to say if he will run for another term or try to run for GOP leader again in the next Congress, which begins in 2025. While he told CNN last fall he would definitely finish out his term, in an interview in May – after he suffered the concussion – he didn’t want to engage.
“I thought this was not an interview about my future,” he said when asked if he would serve out his term or run for leader again. “I thought it was an interview about the 2024 Senate elections.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
The last of the U.S. declared chemical weapons stockpile was destroyed in eastern Kentucky at a military installation, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell announced Friday, a milestone that closes a chapter of warfare dating back to World War I.
According to the Defense Department, the last sarin nerve agent-filled M55 rocket was destroyed Friday at the Blue Grass Army Depot.
Workers at the depot have been completing a decadeslong campaign to eliminate a chemical weapons stockpile that by the end of the Cold War totaled more than 30,000 tons.
“Chemical weapons are responsible for some of the most horrific episodes of human loss,” McConnell said in a statement. “Though the use of these deadly agents will always be a stain on history, today our nation has finally fulfilled our promise to rid our arsenal of this evil.
President Biden said in a statement, “Successive administrations have determined that these weapons should never again be developed or deployed, and this accomplishment not only makes good on our long-standing commitment under the Chemical Weapons Convention, it marks the first time an international body has verified destruction of an entire category of declared weapons of mass destruction.” He also thanked “the thousands of Americans who gave their time and talents to this noble and challenging mission for more than three decades.”
Mr. Biden also urged nations that have not signed the Chemical Weapons Convention to do so, “so that the global ban on chemical weapons can reach its fullest potential.” And he said that, “Russia and Syria should return to compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention and admit their undeclared programs, which have been used to commit brazen atrocities and attacks.”
Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said in a statement, “After years of design, construction, testing and operations, these obsolete weapons have been safely eliminated. The Army is proud to have played a key role in making this demilitarization possible.”
The weapons’ destruction is a major watershed for Richmond, Kentucky and Pueblo, Colorado, where an Army depot destroyed the last of its chemical agents last month. It’s also a defining moment for arms control efforts worldwide.
The U.S. faced a Sept. 30 deadline to eliminate its remaining chemical weapons under the international Chemical Weapons Convention, which took effect in 1997 and was joined by 193 countries. The munitions being destroyed in Kentucky are the last of 51,000 M55 rockets with sarin, a deadly toxin that is also known as GB nerve agent. The rockets have been stored at the depot since the 1940s.
By destroying the munitions, the U.S. is officially underscoring that these types of weapons are no longer acceptable in the battlefield and sending a message to the handful of countries that haven’t joined the agreement, military experts say.
Friday’s announcement came as the Biden administration has also decided to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, a weapon that two-thirds of NATO countries have banned because it can cause many civilian casualties. National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Ukraine has promised to use the munitions — bombs that open in the air and release scores of smaller bomblets — carefully.
Chemical weapons were first used in modern warfare in World War I, where they were estimated to have killed at least 100,000. Despite their subsequent ban by the Geneva Convention, countries continued to stockpile the weapons until the treaty calling for their destruction.
In 1986, Congress mandated the destruction of the U.S. chemical weapons stockpile, and the U.S. first began destroying them in 1990 on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific. The U.S. Army utilized six more sites across the continental U.S. until 2012, at installations in Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Maryland, Oregon and Utah, to continue the work of destroying the stockpile.
In southern Colorado, workers at the Army Pueblo Chemical Depot started destroying the weapons in 2016, and on June 22 completed their mission of neutralizing an entire cache of about 2,600 tons of mustard blister agent. The projectiles and mortars comprised about 8.5% of the country’s original chemical weapons stockpile of 30,610 tons of agent.
Nearly 800,000 chemical munitions containing mustard agent were stored since the 1950s inside rows of heavily guarded concrete and earthen bunkers that pock the landscape near a large swath of farmland east of Pueblo.
The weapons’ destruction alleviates longstanding concerns harbored by civic leaders in Colorado and Kentucky.
“Those (weapons) sitting out there were not a threat,” Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar said. But, he added, “you always wondered what might happen with them.”
In the 1980s, the community around Kentucky’s Blue Grass Army Depot rose up in opposition to the Army’s initial plan to incinerate the plant’s 520 tons of chemical weapons, leading to a decadeslong battle over how to dispose of them. They were able to halt the planned incineration plant, and then, with help from lawmakers, prompted the Army to submit alternative methods to burning the weapons.
Craig Williams, who became the leading voice of the community opposition and later a partner with political leadership and the military, said residents were concerned about potential toxic pollution from burning the deadly chemical agents.
Williams noted that the military eliminated most of its existing stockpile by burning weapons at other, more remote sites, like the Johnston Atoll or at a chemical depot in the middle of the Utah desert. But the Kentucky site was adjacent to Richmond and only a few dozen miles away from Lexington, the state’s second-largest city.
“We had a middle school of over 600 kids a mile away from the (planned) smokestack,” Williams said.
The Kentucky storage facility has housed mustard agent and the VX and sarin nerve agents, much of it inside rockets and other projectiles, since the 1940s. The state’s disposal plant was completed in 2015 and began destroying weapons in 2019. It uses a process called neutralization to dilute the deadly agents so they can be safely disposed of.
Workers at the Pueblo site used heavy machinery to meticulously — and slowly — load aging weapons onto conveyor systems that fed into secure rooms where remote-controlled robots did the dirty and dangerous work of eliminating the toxic mustard agent, which was designed to blister the skin and cause inflammation of the eyes, nose, throat and lungs.
Robotic equipment removed the weapons’ fuses and bursters before the mustard agent was neutralized with hot water and mixed with a caustic solution to prevent the reaction from reversing. The byproduct was further broken down in large tanks swimming with microbes, and the mortars and projectiles were decontaminated at 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (538 degrees Celsius) and recycled as scrap metal.
FILE – In this photo provided by the U.S. Army, workers at the Blue Grass Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant in Richmond, Ky., begin the destruction of the first rocket from a stockpile of M55 rockets with GB nerve agent, July 6, 2022.
U.S. Army via AP, File
Problematic munitions that were leaky or overpacked were sent to an armored, stainless steel detonation chamber to be destroyed at about 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit (593 degrees Celsius).
The Colorado and Kentucky sites were the last among several, including Utah and the Johnston Atoll, where the nation’s chemical weapons had been stockpiled and destroyed.
Kingston Reif, an assistant U.S. secretary of defense for threat reduction and arms control, said the destruction of the last U.S. chemical weapon “will close an important chapter in military history, but one that we’re very much looking forward to closing.”
A canister that had contained mustard gas is recycled at the U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot Thursday, June 8, 2023, in Pueblo, Colo.
David Zalubowski / AP
Officials say the elimination of the U.S. stockpile is a major step forward for the Chemical Weapons Convention. Only three countries — Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan — have not signed the treaty. A fourth, Israel, has signed but not ratified the treaty.
Still, arms control advocates hope this final step by the U.S. could nudge the remaining countries to join. But they also hope it could be used as a model for eliminating other types of weapons.
“It shows that countries can really ban a weapon of mass destruction,” said Paul F. Walker, vice chairman of the Arms Control Association and coordinator of the Chemical Weapons Convention Coalition. “If they want to do it, it just takes the political will and it takes a good verification system.”
WASHINGTON—Having long sought to place a viable alternative to Donald Trump at the head of the party’s ticket, top GOP power brokers finally decided Thursday to rally behind the late Herman Cain for president in 2024. “After much discussion with my fellow Republicans, I have decided to back Herman Cain as our party’s presidential nominee,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in an announcement that followed similar statements from candidates Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, and Chris Christie, all of whom dropped out of the race to endorse the Covid-19 victim and former Godfather’s Pizza CEO. “Though some may raise concerns about his lack of prior electoral success and his current status as a deceased person, those are all merely distractions. A lot of people forget Mr. Cain was our party’s frontrunner in the 2012 race until he was sidelined by accusations of sexual misconduct, something that is no longer an impediment to a Republican seeking public office. And polls show swing voters and independents are more likely to see him as a sympathetic figure since his tragic death three years ago.” A Quinnipiac University Poll released earlier this week found that nine in 10 registered voters described Cain as only “slightly less alive” than President Joe Biden.
As the government careens toward the brink of default without a deal to lift the debt limit, an unlikely source of reassurance has emerged.
“I think everyone needs to relax,” Mitch McConnell told reporters on Tuesday in his home state of Kentucky. “The country will not default.” The longtime Republican leader, who once boasted of being the Senate’s “grim reaper,” isn’t known for his soothing bedside manner. His equanimity was hard to reconcile with the vibes emanating from the Capitol on that particular day, where House Republican negotiators were accusing their Democratic counterparts in the White House of intransigence and insisting that the sides remained far apart.
The Treasury Department has said that if Congress does not raise the nation’s borrowing limit, the government could, as early as June 1, default on its debt for the first time. The economic repercussions could be catastrophic—first a market crash, then, economists believe, a recession. Because the House and Senate would need at least a few days to approve any agreement that President Joe Biden strikes with Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the real deadline could be even sooner.
But McConnell, who has spent nearly half of his 81 years on Earth in the Senate, has seen more than a few difficult negotiations. Despite all the histrionics—the censorious sound bites, the “red lines” each side has drawn, the breakdowns and “pauses”—the talks thus far haven’t looked all that different from past Washington deadline dances, which tend to end with a deal. “This is not that unusual,” McConnell said.
The public feuding is actually a good sign, and so, in a way, is the delay. “They need this to run to the very last minute,” Brendan Buck, a former aide to Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, told me. As Buck sees it, the theatrics between GOP and Democratic leaders is a necessary precursor to a deal, because it shows partisans on their respective sides that they fought as hard as they could before reaching a compromise.
Biden and McCarthy are trying to find a solution that can pass both a Republican-controlled House and a Democratic-controlled Senate. A quick-and-tidy agreement is likely to be viewed suspiciously by both parties, and particularly the GOP’s hard-right faction, which made McCarthy sweat out 15 votes to become speaker. “There’s no way McCarthy could have walked in two weeks ago, had a one-hour meeting with the president, and come out and said, ‘We have a deal,’” Matt Glassman, a former congressional aide who is now a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, told me. “That would be just deadly for him with his conference.”
Today’s impasse has drawn comparisons to the debt-ceiling negotiations in 2011 between Boehner and then-President Barack Obama. Those talks featured even more drama, including the sudden collapse of a “grand bargain” and, later, a worried prime-time address to the nation from Obama. Even though the two parties have since drifted further apart (mostly thanks to the GOP’s move rightward), the gap between them in these negotiations is much smaller.
Back then, Obama was pushing aggressively for tax increases, while Boehner wanted several trillion dollars in spending cuts, including major changes to entitlement programs. Biden initially took a harder line this time, refusing for months to engage McCarthy in negotiations over the debt ceiling. But since backing off that position, he’s made only half-hearted—and swiftly rejected—attempts to get McCarthy to raise taxes or make any kind of policy concession. To the frustration of progressives, he’s even seemed willing to tighten work requirements for people receiving federal safety-net benefits. Republicans, for their part, have agreed not to seek cuts to Medicare or Social Security. “I don’t actually think this is that difficult of a deal to reach,” Buck said. Getting that deal through the House and the Senate, he said, will be more difficult, which is why both Biden and McCarthy will need to save the biggest deadline pressure for the votes themselves.
By most accounts, the parties are haggling chiefly over whether to freeze government spending at current levels—Biden’s latest offer—or cut as much as $130 billion by reverting to 2022 spending, as Republicans have proposed. Republicans want to exempt the Defense Department from any cuts, which is a sticking point for Democrats.
Considering the yawning philosophical differences between the parties, that’s not much of a gap. “Compromising over numbers isn’t that hard,” Glassman said. “It’s not like compromising over abortion.”
Look closer and there are other reasons for optimism. Although some of McCarthy’s members are urging him to hold fast to the conservative provisions of the debt-ceiling bill Republicans narrowly passed last month, the speaker has moved off those demands. Even the blowups have been timed, either intentionally or coincidentally, to avoid spooking investors and causing stock markets to slide. The White House meetings between McCarthy and Biden, for example, have all occurred after the markets closed, and the biggest breakdown in the talks (so far) happened over the weekend before negotiations resumed on Monday.
Republicans have many reasons for not causing a stock-market crash; the simplest is that they and many of their constituents would stand to lose a lot of money. Another possible reason is that party leaders, and McConnell especially, seem to recognize that a panic over the debt ceiling is not in their political interest and could undermine their negotiating position.
McConnell is not a soothsayer—his prediction that Donald Trump’s grip on the GOP would loosen, for example, has not exactly panned out. Nor is his confidence that the country will avert default merely a forecast from a disinterested observer. If McConnell is saying it, he must think it benefits Republicans for him to do so.
But even a self-interested assurance is one more indication of hope, a sign that Republicans want to prevent economic disaster. A debt-ceiling deal between Biden and McCarthy remains more likely than not. It might just take a few more days of posturing and setbacks before it happens.
People walk and ride bicycles past the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on May 11, 2023.
Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — The Congressional Budget Office on Friday said tax revenues and emergency measures after June 15 “will probably allow the government to continue financing operations through at least the end of July.”
The updated guidance otherwise reiterated the CBO’s earlier uncertainty about the debt ceiling during the first few weeks of June. Even though mid-June tax revenues could ease pressure on the Treasury through July, there’s still the risk of default in the first few weeks of June, the key government forecaster said.
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“If the debt limit remains unchanged, there is significant risk that at some point in the first two weeks of June, the government will no longer be able to pay all of its obligations,” said the CBO report.
The new report came as the White House and congressional leaders postponed a scheduled Friday meeting to continue negotiations, citing little progress so far over any deal to cut spending and pair that with a debt limit hike.
“The extent to which the Treasury will be able to fund the government’s ongoing operations will remain uncertain throughout May, even if the Treasury ultimately runs out of funds in early June. That uncertainty exists because the timing and amount of revenue collections and outlays over the intervening weeks could differ from CBO’s projections,” said the latest report.
The CBO also issued an updated projection of the federal budget deficit for 2023, raising it to $1.5 trillion.
The office warned that there was still “a great deal of uncertainty” around the deficit figure, in part due to an expected Supreme Court ruling on President Joe Biden‘s student loan forgiveness plan.
Legal experts told CNBC the nation’s highest court is likely to strike down the $400 billion debt forgiveness plan, given the court’s conservative majority.
If that happens, the administration would likely record the money it set aside for the loan forgiveness last year as a reduction in outlays this year, the CBO reported.
The CBO is a nonpartisan federal agency that provides objective budget and economic data to Congress, typically to inform legislation.
The debt ceiling talks were postponed less than a day before Biden was set to sit down with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.
That meeting was to be the second this week, after a Tuesday huddle failed to produce any significant developments.
It was unclear Friday what impact, if any, the new report would have on talks currently underway at the staff level, between aides to the four congressional leaders and White House liaisons.
As both the House and Senate prepared to leave for the weekend on Thursday, McCarthy said he had not seen “a seriousness” from the White House regarding any potential deal. “It seems like they want to default more than they want a deal,” the California Republican told reporters in the Capitol.
Democrats appeared equally dug in, as Schumer indicated in a letter to his caucus Friday, in which he said staff level talks would continue in the coming days.
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Yet even as aides worked to find common ground, Schumer said Democratic senators would keep “highlighting the devastating impact” of cuts to the federal budget that are part of a bill passed by House Republicans last month.
Central to the partisan impasse is the White House’s insistence that Congress vote to raise the debt limit without preconditions, and House Republicans’ demand that any debt limit hike be paired with sweeping cuts to federal spending and new work requirements for social safety net programs.
Failure to raise the debt ceiling before the U.S. runs out of available cash and emergency measures would cause an “economic catastrophe,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Monday.
“That is something that could produce financial chaos, it would drastically reduce the amount of spending and would mean that Social Security recipients and veterans and people counting on money from the government that they’re owed, contractors, we just would not have enough money to pay the bills,” Yellen told CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime.”
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks to the press as US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) (L) listens, after meeting with US President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington, DC, on January 24, 2023.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — Democrats responded to the news that the U.S. could default on its debt as early as June 1 by hardening their public positions, accusing Republicans of holding the nation’s economic welfare hostage to demands for federal budget cuts.
But behind the scenes, President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries have all taken steps in the past day that could pave the way for an 11th hour deal with a small group of Republicans to avert a default, by raising or suspending the nation’s debt limit.
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The moves underscore a growing disconnect between the political rhetoric of the debt ceiling debate and the private reality of a potentially catastrophic U.S. default that now appears closer than it did just 24 hours ago.
The White House insisted Tuesday that Biden will not use a meeting he set up with congressional leaders for May 9 to negotiate over the debt ceiling. “He’s going to make it very clear how it is Congress’s constitutional duty to act,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “He is not going to negotiate on the debt ceiling, that is not going to change.”
But the very fact that Biden is meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at all, however, signals a significant change. It comes after months of Biden and the White House demanding that McCarthy produce a Republican budget and agree to take debt default off the table, neither of which the speaker has done.
In the Senate, where Democrats have the majority, Schumer ripped a bill House Republicans passed last week. The measure would raise the debt ceiling in exchange for massive cuts to discretionary federal spending. It squeezed through the slim GOP-majority House despite opposition from every Democrat and four Republicans.
Schumer said the Republican bill “would tear at the fabric of American society, impose dramatic cuts to our public security and cut law enforcement dramatically at a time when we need help from them.” He argued that it would result in the “abandonment of veterans [and] terrible job losses.”
Yet moments before Schumer delivered his scathing condemnation of the House GOP bill, he entered that same bill onto the Senate calendar under a special rule that allows it to bypass the Senate committee process and move right to the floor for consideration.
Schumer also moved a separate piece of legislation to the floor – a Democratic bill to suspend the debt limit through Dec. 31, 2024.
There are two ways for Congress to avoid a looming debt default: The first is by voting to raise the statutory debt limit, currently set at $31.4 trillion. The second is by voting to suspend the limit for a set amount of time, essentially stopping the clock on default.
For House and Senate Republicans who have promised constituents they will not vote to raise the debt limit without first securing major concessions from Democrats on spending, the option of voting to suspend the debt limit could offer them some room to maneuver without breaking their pledge to voters.
Later in the day, Schumer told reporters that after the Senate passed a so-called “clean” debt ceiling suspension bill, “then we could use [the House GOP bill) for a proper discussion of the appropriations and budget process.”
As Democrats explored their options, Republicans were largely muted on Tuesday. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke on the Senate floor immediately after Schumer, he did not mention the debt ceiling.
He later insisted that any negotiations must take place between McCarthy and Biden. “The ultimate solution will be between the Republican House and the president, and the sooner the president and the speaker get about it, the better off the country will be,” McConnell told reporters at a press briefing.
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speaks at the the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., April 17, 2023.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
On the House side, plans were also in motion Tuesday to begin work on a way for Democrats to move a bill to raise the debt limit to the floor without the support of GOP majority leadership using a legislative vehicle known as a discharge petition.
Specifically, Jeffries said in a letter to his Democratic colleagues that Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., “just filed a special rule that would allow for Floor consideration of a bipartisan measure to avoid a dangerous default.”
“The filing of a debt ceiling measure to be brought up on the discharge calendar preserves an important option,” wrote Jeffries.
A Democratic discharge petition would still face major hurdles, starting with challenge of convincing at least a half dozen House Republicans to abandon to dramatically cross the aisle to vote for a Democratic bill. If it were to pass the House, any bill would then face the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate.
Senate math will be further complicated by the ongoing absence of California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, who has been away from Washington since February on a medical absence, with no immediate plans to return.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has returned to the Senate following a period of recovery in the wake of a fall.
McConnell arrived on Capitol Hill Monday morning and did not answer questions from CNN about how he is feeling after spending the last several weeks recovering after a fall where he suffered a concussion and fractured rib. CNN spotted McConnell in the Capitol exclusively.
McConnell was at the Capitol on Friday, but Monday marks the GOP Senate leader’s first day back in session. The House and Senate are both returning to session today following a two-week recess period.
McConnell also did not answer a question about how he will handle the issue of how Democrats want to temporarily replace Sen. Dianne Feinstein on the Judiciary committee. Feinstein’s absence as she recovers from shingles is making it more difficult for Democrats to process judicial nominees on the panel, setting up a potential clash with Republicans as they seek to replace her.
McConnell was hospitalized last month after he tripped and fell at a dinner event in Washington, DC. He was treated for a concussion and a rib fracture before being released to an inpatient rehabilitation facility for physical therapy.
At the time, a McConnell aide told CNN, “it is very common to undergo physical therapy to regain strength after a hospital stay.”
McConnell, who is 81 years old, left the physical therapy facility on March 25. In a statement, the Senate GOP leader said that, following advice from his physical therapists, he would, “spend the next few days working for Kentuckians and the Republican Conference from home.”
McConnell added that he remained “in frequent touch with my Senate colleagues and my staff. I look forward to returning in person to the Senate soon.”
Earlier this year, McConnell became the longest-serving party leader in Senate history.
During his absence, Senate Republicans who spoke with the McConnell said he was itching to get back to the chamber. The No. 2 Senate Republican, Minority Whip John Thune, noted that he was “anxious” to return, and Texas Senator John Cornyn told reporters that McConnell was “chomping at the bit” to come back to the Capitol.
This was not McConnell’s first fall. Several years ago, he fractured his shoulder in a fall at his home in Kentucky.
The top Republican is not the only senator returning from an extended absence.
Across the aisle, Democrat Senator John Fetterman will return to the Senate after receiving inpatient treatment for clinical depression at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Fetterman was discharged from the hospital at the end of last month.
Feinstein has been absent from the Senate after being treated in the hospital, and then at home, for shingles. It is not yet clear exactly when she may return.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is back at work in the U.S. Capitol on Monday, almost six weeks after a fall at a Washington-area hotel and extended treatment for a concussion.
The longtime Kentucky senator, 81, has been recovering at home since he was released from a rehabilitation facility March 25. He fell after attending an event earlier that month, injuring his head and fracturing a rib.
McConnell arrived at the Capitol early Monday and is expected to work a full schedule in the Senate this week.
In brief remarks on the Senate floor as the chamber came back into session after a two-week recess, McConnell criticized President Joe Biden for not doing enough to negotiate on the nation’s debt ceiling and thanked his colleagues for their well-wishes.
“I’m very happy to be back,” McConnell said. “There’s important business for Congress to tackle.”
And he joked, “Suffice it to say, this wasn’t the first time that being hard-headed has served me very well.”
McConnell returns to the Senate ahead of a busy stretch in which Congress will have to find a way to raise the debt ceiling and negotiate additional aid for the Ukraine war, among other policy matters. And he comes back as several other senators have been out for medical reasons, raising questions about how much the Senate will be able to achieve in the coming months with a 51-49 split between the parties.
Already, the GOP leader’s absence, along with those of Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and John Fetterman, among others, have added to the Senate’s lethargic pace in the first few months of the year. Unlike the last two years, in which Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was able to push through key elements of President Joe Biden’s agenda with the help of a Democratic-led House, the Senate has been significantly slowed with Republicans now in charge in the House. And absences have made even simple votes like nominations more difficult.
One immediate question for McConnell upon his return is whether to help Democrats temporarily replace Feinstein on the Senate Judiciary Committee as she continues to recover in California from a case of the shingles. Democrats have become increasingly frustrated as the Democrat’s more than six-week absence on the panel has stalled confirmation of some of Biden’s nominees, and Feinstein has asked for a short-term substitute on the committee.
Democrats can’t do that, though, without help from Republicans, since approval of the process would take 60 votes on the Senate floor. Two GOP members of the Judiciary panel, Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, have already said they don’t believe that Republicans should help Democrats replace Feinstein.
It is unclear when Feinstein, 89, will return to Washington. Her office has so far declined to say.
Also returning to the Senate on Monday was Fetterman, who was hospitalized for clinical depression in February. He was treated for six weeks at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and his doctors say his depression is now “in remission.”
Fetterman’s announcement that he was checking himself into the hospital earlier this year came after he suffered a stroke last year and has struggled with auditory processing disorder, which can render someone unable to speak fluidly and quickly process spoken conversation into meaning. The Pennsylvania Democrat, 53, now uses devices in conversations, meetings and congressional hearings that transcribe spoken words in real time.
In a statement when he was released from Walter Reed late last month, Fetterman said the care he received there “changed my life.”
“I’m excited to be the father and husband I want to be, and the senator Pennsylvania deserves,” said Fetterman, who won praise for his decision to seek treatment.
McConnell visited his Capitol office on Friday ahead of his Monday return. In video captured by NBC News, he walked into the building without assistance as aides kept close by.
This was the second major injury for McConnell in recent years. Four years ago he tripped and fell at his home in Kentucky, causing a shoulder fracture that required surgery. The Senate had just started a summer recess, and he worked from home for some weeks as he recovered.
McConnell had polio in his early childhood and he has long acknowledged some difficulty as an adult in climbing stairs.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is back recuperating at his home after he suffered a concussion in a fall earlier this month. He was first hospitalized, and then received treatment at an inpatient rehabilitation facility.
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell returned home Saturday after being released from an rehabilitation facility where he was receiving treatment for a concussion he suffered during a fall earlier this month.
In a statement, the 81-year-old McConnell said he had “finished inpatient physical therapy” and would spend “the next few days” working from home on the advice of his physical therapists.
“I look forward to returning in person to the Senate soon,” McConnell said.
On March 8, the Republican senator from Kentucky tripped and fell while attending a private dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, D.C., and was subsequently hospitalized for several days with a concussion.
On March 13, he was discharged from the hospital to the inpatient rehabilitation facility.
Sen. John Thune of South Dakota said Tuesday that McConnell was “anxious to get back” to his work at the Capitol.
Two other members of the Senate remain absent while they receive medical treatment. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania has been receiving treatment for clinical depression at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center since mid-February, while Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California is recovering from shingles.
— Caitlin Yilek and Jack Turman contributed to this report.
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., conducts a news conference in the U.S. Capitol after the senate luncheons on Tuesday, January 24, 2023.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Saturday he has been released from the rehabilitation facility where he had physical therapy for a concussion caused by a fall earlier this month.
The 81-year-old Kentucky Republican said in a statement released by his office that he will work from home for the next few days. The Senate is scheduled to be on break for the weeks of April 3 and April 10.
McConnell was at dinner on March 8 after a hotel reception for a campaign committee aligned with him when he tripped and fell. In addition to the concussion, he also had a rib fracture.
He was released from the hospital on March 13 and, upon the advice of his doctor, moved to an inpatient rehabilitation facility for physical therapy and to continue his recovery.
Concussions can be serious injuries and take time for recovery. Even a single incident of concussion can limit a person’s abilities during that period.
“I’m going to follow the advice of my physical therapists and spend the next few days working for Kentuckians and the Republican Conference from home,” McConnell said in the statement. “I’m in frequent touch with my Senate colleagues and my staff. I look forward to returning in person to the Senate soon.”
Almost four years ago he tripped and fell at his home in Kentucky, causing a shoulder fracture that required surgery. The Senate had just started a summer recess, and he worked from home for some weeks as he recovered.
In his early childhood, he had polio and he has acknowledged some difficulty as an adult in climbing stairs.
McConnell was first elected in 1984. In January, he became the longest-serving Senate leader when the new Congress convened, breaking the previous record of 16 years.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Saturday that he has been released from an inpatient physical therapy facility after he fell earlier this month and was treated for a concussion and rib fracture.
“I want to sincerely thank everyone for all the kind wishes. I’m happy to say I finished inpatient physical therapy earlier today and I’m glad to be home,” McConnell said in a statement.
“I’m going to follow the advice of my physical therapists and spend the next few days working for Kentuckians and the Republican Conference from home. I’m in frequent touch with my Senate colleagues and my staff. I look forward to returning in person to the Senate soon.”
McConnell will work from his Washington, DC, home this week and is not expected to return to the Senate before the chamber breaks for their two-week recess, a McConnell aide told CNN.
The Senate minority leader was admitted to a hospital after he tripped and fell at a dinner event earlier this month. He remained in the hospital for several days. After that, he began physical therapy at an inpatient rehabilitation facility.
Previously, a McConnell aide had said that the length of the 81-year-old Senate Republican leader’s stay at the facility would be decided “by the Leader’s physicians and the therapists.” The aide said, “It is very common to undergo physical therapy to regain strength after a hospital stay and this ranges anywhere from a week to two weeks.”
Republican senators who have spoken with McConnell have told CNN that he wants to get back to work. Texas Sen. John Cornyn said recently that McConnell is “chomping at the bit” to return to the Capitol, and Senate Minority Whip John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, noted that he was “anxious” to come back.
This was not McConnell’s first fall. In 2019, he fractured his shoulder in a fall at his home in Kentucky.
The top Republican is not the only absent senator. Across the aisle, 89-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California has been receiving treatment for shingles at home following a brief stay in the hospital. And Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman is undergoing inpatient treatment for clinical depression at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
This story has been updated with additional information.
Jeff Glor reports on a deadly shooting in Germany, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s condition after suffering a fall, and why fewer Americans are going to college.
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