McConnell: Clinton Would be Four More Years of Obama's Policies
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a supporter of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, said the United States cannot handle four more years of Obama-like policies.
In an interview on the FOX Business Network’s Cavuto Coast-to-Coast, the Republican senator from Kentucky, explained that while he doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Trump on every political issue, he believes a vote for Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton is a vote for a four-year extension of President Barack Obama’s leadership style.
“If [Trump] simply went into the Oval Office after he was sworn in and began to undo the executive orders and regulatory pronouncements that have slowed this economy, that would be the beginning step in the right direction,” McConnell said.
The senator went on to explain that America’s recovery from the Great Recession hasn’t measured up to other recovery periods in the nation’s history since World War II. He said the trend is generally the deeper the recession, the quicker the snapback.
“That has not happened this time,” he said. “The middle class is shrinking. This is the worst recovery after a recession since World War II. The number of people on food stamps is at a record level. The labor force participation rate is back at a level it was during the Carter administration.”
The labor force participation rate, according to the Labor Department, fell to 62.8% from 63% in April from March as the unemployment rate steadied at 5% and the economy added 160,000 jobs. Fresh data on the state of the labor market will be released on Friday morning at 8:30 a.m. ET. Economists expect to see 162,000 new jobs created in May with the unemployment rate ticking down to 4.9%.
McConnell said its unnecessary regulations that have weighed on the U.S. economy, preventing it from seeing a higher rate of growth. The Commerce Department reported last week that in the first quarter, the economy grew at an annualized rate of 0.8%, a slightly faster pace than an initial reading of 0.5% showed.
In his view, the 2016 election is about making a choice of two “unpopular” candidates.
“You might fanaticize about somebody else. You may have supported somebody else in the primary, but this is your choice. [A third-party candidate] will not succeed, and will only help elect Hillary Clinton. I would not want on my conscience, as a conservative leader in the country, that I did anything that made it more likely we have four more years like the last eight,” McConnell said.
During the interview on Wednesday, the senator also discussed his new book “The Long Game,” his decision to support Barry Goldwater in 1964 but not cast his vote for the candidate due to his view on civil rights, his battle with Polio, and how he decided to get into a political career.