Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Tuesday ripped Democrats for being so preoccupied with impeaching President Donald Trump that they continue to stonewall on defense spending, national security and other issues.
"The very bills that Democrats are resisting are essential for our national defense strategy," McConnell said on the Senate floor. "If Democrats divide Congress over non-defense issues and kill these bills, they'll have played right into our adversaries' hands."
Senate Democrats in September blocked a Republican-backed appropriations bill that included $693 billion in defense spending for fiscal 2020 — and lawmakers passed a passed a temporary spending bill last month that would keep the federal government running through Dec. 20.
But McConnell also hit Democrats for avoiding action on the USMCA trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, accusing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., "of stalling it for months."
"It has been this broken record," McConnell said. "I understand this very week, while the speaker of the House has apparently flown to Madrid to discuss climate change, she keeps offering the same empty rhetoric that's no different than what she was saying 10 months ago.
"American workers have waited, and waited, and waited," the majority leader said, adding that as many as 176,000 new American jobs would be created under the trade deal. "House Democrats keep stalling.
"But remember Democrats' new playbook," McConnell later added. "Obsess over impeachment, obstruct everything else — including, apparently, even our troops and national security.
"Our Democratic colleagues must understand that national security comes before 'the resistance,'" he concluded. "The country cannot afford this new tactic, obsess over impeachment and obstruct everything else.
"I hope it changes soon."
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