Soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell laid out Sunday his conservative priority agenda for 2015, and warned that President Obama might not like what's coming down the pike.
“We’ll be voting on things I know he’s not going to like,” McConnell said during an appearance on CNN’s "State of the Union."
"And I hope we can put them on his desk," he said.
McConnell said the new Republican-controlled Congress, which convenes Tuesday, will kick off the year with more attempts to repeal what he called Obama’s “terrible piece of legislation,” the Affordable Care Act. Though, he said they might aim for a targeted removal of chunks of the law, specifically the medical device tax and the individual mandate.
While jobs and the economy remain his top goals in the Senate, the Kentucky Republican argued the Keystone XL pipeline could prove to be a shot in the arm for the economy amid the "regulatory onslaught" he blamed for a slow "bounce-back" from the 2008 recession. Getting that legislation approved will be high on McConnell's to-do list.
Though at his year-end press conference, Obama seemed skeptical of the controversial project’s benefits. “There are a lot more direct ways to create well-paying American construction jobs.” He said investments in infrastructure would be more effective approach to job creation.
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McConnell stated he’s "not opposed" to working in a bipartisan fashion with the Obama administration. Americans want the “dysfunction” to stop, he said. “When the American people elect divided government, they're not saying they don't want anything done. What they are saying is they want things in the political center, things that both sides can agree on.”
Can they actually break through the gridlock to make progress? McConnell said, “We’re gonna find out.”