Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday rejected the idea that congressional approval of $50 billion in new spending for 2016 shows that Democrats still run Capitol Hill, and defended the huge spending bill as a necessary compromise between the two parties.
Democrats on Friday praised passage of the deal. Many crowed that they were able to force Republicans to agree to increased domestic spending. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the bill capped off a “successful year” for Democrats.
But on CNN Sunday morning, McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said his party had to do that deal to get more defense spending.
“Republicans felt like we needed [to be] responsive to the foreign policy threat that we’ve just been talking about, to spend more on defense,” he said. “And so, in order to achieve that, we had to work with a Democratic president who wanted to spend more on the domestic side.”
“If it had been left up to me, we wouldn’t have added that much back, but nobody’s a dictator here,” he said. “We can’t do things, one party only, in a time of divided government.”
He stressed that the GOP was able to secure a end to the oil export ban as part of the deal, though Democrats can boast of extended tax credits for green energy production.
“It was a big compromise,” McConnell said. “That’s what you have to do when you have divided government.”
