Not retribution: McConnell defends removal of Rick Scott and Mike Lee from Commerce

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) addressed his removal of Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Mike Lee (R-UT) from the Senate Commerce Committee. He said it was not retribution for challenging his leadership last year.

McConnell said in an interview with Fox News’s Martha MacCallum that Scott had a temporary assignment for two years on the Commerce Committee — Republicans have term limits for their members on the committee.

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“He could have traded in one of his permanent committees for Commerce and stayed on it. He had a temporary assignment,” McConnell said of Scott. “There’s were others that wanted it, and I gave it to two other senators. No particular reprisal in mind. I have no animus toward Rick Scott at all.”

McConnell said Scott could have picked Commerce as one of his two main committee assignments.

Scott claimed that McConnell let him know of his committee removal via text message.

“This is what happens when you challenge leadership,” Scott previously said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.

“It was McConnell’s decision to remove someone who has actually run businesses and ran the third-largest state from a committee I’ve served on for four years. You’ll have to ask him why.”

When MacCallum told McConnell the Florida senator blamed the removal on retribution, he said, “Well, that’s just not true.”

McConnell gave the two open Commerce Committee positions to Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY).

The minority leader also called out the Senate for doing “virtually nothing” for a month while House Republicans are passing legislation.

“So, I am curious as to what Sen. Schumer may have in mind for us to do,” McConnell said.

In reference to the debt ceiling, McConnell said he is “on board” with seeing spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit, which the U.S. hit earlier this year.

“Actually, Joe Biden and I did this back in 2011. He was delegated by the president to deal with me as the leader of my party and the Senate,” McConnell said of the negotiations of the Budget Control Act, which he said reduced spending two years in a row for the first time since the Korean War.

“So, the president knows that he himself has a history of negotiating in connection with the debt ceiling,” McConnell added. “So, what I think the speaker is asking him to do is not unreasonable and certainly within precedent.”

President Joe Biden will give his State of the Union address Tuesday at 9 p.m. EST, his first speech to the GOP House majority. Among the topics expected to be mentioned are immigration, Ukraine, police reform, and, potentially, a comment on the success of shooting down the Chinese spy balloon.

A senior defense official told reporters on Saturday that Chinese surveillance balloons “transited the continental United States briefly at least three times during the prior administration and once that we know of at the beginning of this administration, but never for this duration of time.”

MacCallum also pointed out claims of 10 Chinese spy flight sightings, with six seen under the Trump administration and four under Biden. However, McConnell said he thinks people should be focusing less on prior instances.

“Look, I’m one of the Gang of Eight. One of eight people entitled to know virtually everything in the intelligence field. I never heard anything about this,” McConnell said. “Regardless of whether we knew about it in the past, let’s focus on what did happen last week.”

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McConnell added that this is just another thing to add to negative perceptions of the Biden administration.

“Only 13% of the American people thought the State of the Union was strong,” McConnell said.

“This is the weak reaction coupled with things like withdrawing from Afghanistan that haphazard way we did that in 2021 that leave the American people with the impression that the country is not doing well.”

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Tags: Mitch McConnell, Rick Scott, Commerce, Joe Biden

Original Author: Rachel Schilke

Original Location: Not retribution: McConnell defends removal of Rick Scott and Mike Lee from Commerce