"The Senate isn't broken," former Republican Majority Leader and GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole believes, but "it's badly bent."
Dole, 91, who will appear in a pretaped interview next week on MSNBC's
"The Daily Rundown," was shown in a clip from the interview on the show Friday morning, telling host Chuck Todd that even despite all the political gridlock, there is one way to recover: leadership.
"It's just going to take some strong leadership in both parties," said Dole. "I mean, you've got to get things done."
There is a lot of blame being passed around, he said.
"They blame the House Republicans who have passed a lot of bills that have never seen the light of day in the Senate," Dole said. "So it's sort of a pox on both of your houses."
On Thursday, just as time was running out before the August break, both houses of Congress were unable to pass emergency legislation to address the migration crisis at the Mexican border.
On Friday, the House
advanced a bill that, if approved, could clear the way for eventual deportation of more than 500,000 immigrants brought here illegally as children while addressing the surge of immigrants.
But Dole, despite his years of leadership, said he doesn't have an answers about how to stop the stalemate.
"I wish I had an answer," the former lawmaker told Todd. "I don't have an answer. I get along fine with Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell," the leaders of the House and Senate.
And even though the two "have different leadership styles than I had," Dole said that maybe the upcoming midterm election will "clear things up a bit."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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