The political positions of Mitch McConnell are reflected by his United States Senate voting record, public speeches, and interviews, as well as his actions as Senate majority and minority leader. McConnell was known as a pragmatist and a moderate Republican early in his political career, but shifted to the right over time. He led opposition to stricter campaign finance laws, culminating in the Supreme Court ruling that partially overturned the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) in 2010 and was influential in opposition to abortion, culminating in the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe V Wade and ended federal abortion protections.
9/11 first responders In 2010, McConnell voted against the Zadroga Act, which was designed to provide medical treatment for 9/11 first responders who experienced health complications related to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. McConnell refused to support the bill unless the Bush tax cuts were extended first. In 2015, McConnell blocked legislation seeking to replenish funds for the 9/11 responders, so that it could not go up for a vote in the Senate. McConnell refused to support the bill unless legislation was also passed to lift a U.S. ban on oil exports. Former Daily Show host Jon Stewart, a prominent advocate for the bill, singled out McConnell's role, saying McConnell did not care about anything "other than politics" amid reports that McConnell was holding the bill hostage to get Democrats to meet his demands on unrelated issues.
In 2019, Jon Stewart gave emotional testimony in the House of Representatives, asking for the 9/11 responders' health care funds to be replenished anew. Shortly thereafter, the House approved legislation to renew the health care funds. Stewart subsequently criticized McConnell for not prioritizing passage of the bill in the Senate, saying the issue "has never been dealt with compassionately by Senator McConnell" and that only "under intense lobbying and public shaming has he even deigned to move on it." McConnell responded, saying the legislation would be addressed in the Senate and that "it sounds to me like he is looking for some way to take offense."
Campaign finance McConnell led opposition to stricter campaign finance regulations, with the Lexington Herald Leader describing it as McConnell's "pet issue." He has argued that campaign finance regulations reduce participation in political campaigns and protect incumbents from competition. In 1990, he led a filibuster against a campaign finance reform bill. He spearheaded the movement against the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. His opposition to the bill culminated in the 2003 Supreme Court case McConnell v. Federal Election Commission and the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the latter of which ruled part of the act unconstitutional. McConnell has been an advocate for free speech at least as far back as the early 1970s when he was teaching night courses at the University of Louisville. "No issue has shaped his career more than the intersection of campaign financing and free speech," political reporter Robert Costa wrote in 2012. In a recording of a 2014 fundraiser McConnell expressed his disapproval of the McCain-Feingold law, saying, "The worst day of my political life was when President George W. Bush signed McCain-Feingold into law in the early part of his first Administration."
On January 2, 2013, the Public Campaign Action Fund, a liberal nonprofit group that backs stronger campaign finance regulation, released a report highlighting eight instances from McConnell's political career in which a vote or a blocked vote (filibuster), coincided with an influx of campaign contributions to McConnell's campaign.
In December 2018, McConnell opposed a Democratic resolution that overturned IRS guidance to reduce the amount of donor information certain tax-exempt groups would have to give the IRS, saying, "In a climate that is increasingly hostile to certain kinds of political expression and open debate, the last thing Washington needs to do is to chill the exercise of free speech and add to the sense of intimidation."
Prior to his Senate run, McConnell favored campaign finance reform, describing money in politics as a "cancer" in 1973.
Civil rights McConnell attended the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave the "I Have a Dream" speech. In 1964, at the age of 22, he attended civil rights rallies, and interned with Senator John Sherman Cooper, a pro-civil rights Republican from Kentucky. He has said his time with Cooper inspired him to run for the Senate later in life. In January 1988, McConnell voted against the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987. The bill passed and President Reagan vetoed the bill. McConnell voted against the override attempt by the Senate in March 1988. The veto was overridden and the bill became law regardless.
Criminal justice reform In late 2018, McConnell stalled the passage of the First Step Act (a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill) in the Senate. As of December 2018, McConnell had yet to endorse the bill, which had been endorsed by President Donald Trump. Democratic Senators Dick Durbin and Kamala Harris stated that McConnell was the only impediment to the bill's passage. The Senate passed the First Step Act on December 18, 2018, and the bill was signed into law by President Donald Trump on December 21, 2018. McConnell voted in favor of the bill. McConnell had been reluctant to call for a vote because the Senate Republican Conference was divided on the bill.
Economy
In 2010, McConnell requested earmarks for the defense contractor BAE Systems while the company was under investigation by the Department of Justice for alleged bribery of foreign officials.
In June 2011, McConnell introduced a Constitutional Balanced Budget Amendment. The amendment would require two-thirds votes in Congress to increase taxes or for federal spending to exceed the current year's tax receipts or 18% of the prior year's GDP. The amendment specifies situations when these requirements would be waived.
During the Great Recession, as Congress and the Obama administration negotiated reforms of the banking system, McConnell played an important role in preventing the addition of a provision requiring banks to prefund a reserve intended to be used to rescue insolvent banks in the future. When there appeared to be bipartisan and majority support for such a bank-funded reserve, McConnell criticized the provision, referred to it as a "bailout fund" and turned "opposition to it a litmus test for Senate Republicans", according to one study. According to the study, "McConnell's attack, along with his insistence that opposition would be a matter of party principle, undermined the fragile coalition supporting the prefunded reserve, and the White Housefearing that advocating a bank levy as part of the president's broader reform would enable opponents to kill the whole billshelved the idea."
After two intercessions to get federal grants for Alltech, whose president T. Pearse Lyons made subsequent campaign contributions to McConnell, to build a plant in Kentucky for producing ethanol from algae, corncobs, and switchgrass, McConnell criticized President Obama in 2012 for twice mentioning biofuel production from algae in a speech touting his "all-of-the-above" energy policy.
In 2014, McConnell voted to help break Ted Cruz's filibuster attempt against a debt limit increase and then against the bill itself. In 2014, McConnell opposed the Paycheck Fairness Act (a bill that "punishes employers for retaliating against workers who share wage information, puts the justification burden on employers as to why someone is paid less and allows workers to sue for punitive damages of wage discrimination") because it would "line the pockets of trial lawyers", not help women.
In April 2014, under McConnell, Republicans in the Senate voted to kill a minimum wage increase.
In July 2014, McConnell expressed opposition to a U.S. Senate bill that would limit the practice of corporate inversion by U.S. corporations seeking to limit U.S. tax liability.
Under McConnell, the Republican-led Senate voted to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
In 2018, McConnell called for entitlement cuts and raised concern about government deficits. He blamed the deficit on government spending, and dismissed criticisms of the tax cuts bill he passed the year prior, which added more than $1 trillion in debt.
In 2019, McConnell introduced legislation to eliminate the estate tax (which is a tax on inheritances over $11.2 million).
Election security
Prior to the 2016 election, FBI Director James Comey, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, and other officials briefed the leadership of both parties about the Russian interference in the elections. They also urged the leadership to adopt a strong bipartisan statement warning Russia against interference in the election. At the meeting, McConnell "raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics." Vice President Joe Biden and Obama's chief of staff later blamed McConnell's opposition for effectively scuttling the proposed bipartisan rebuke; instead they issued a softer, "watered-down" bipartisan joint statement which simply called for additional cybersecurity precautions, and did not mention Russia. Publicly, however, McConnell said in December 2016 that he supported "investigating American intelligence findings that Moscow intervened" in the election.
In November 2017, McConnell opposed legislation that would have protected Special Counsel Robert Mueller while Mueller was conducting an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. In April 2018, McConnell thwarted another bipartisan legislative effort to protect Mueller's job. He said he thought it was unnecessary, as he did not expect the president to fire Mueller. In March 2018, after President Trump criticized Mueller for hiring investigators who were registered as Democrats, McConnell praised Mueller's selection as Special Counsel.
After Mueller's Special Counsel investigation concluded that there was "sweeping and systematic" Russian interference in the 2016 elections, several legislative measures were proposed in 2019 to tighten election security, some of which had bipartisan support. McConnell blocked the bills from being voted upon in the Senate, asserting that the sanctions placed against Russia in 2017 and the $380 million Congress had provided to the states in response to Russian interference sufficiently addressed the matter.As of February 2020.
Environment In 1992, after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had found conclusive evidence that human activities significantly contribute to climate change, McConnell claimed that there was "no conclusive evidence of significant long-term global warming", that there was no scientific consensus on the subject, misleadingly claimed that scientists were alarmed about global cooling in the 1970s, and that climate change mitigation would be "the most expensive attack on jobs and the economy in this country." In 2014, McConnell continued to deny that climate change is a problem, telling the Cincinnati Enquirer editorial board, "I'm not a scientist, I am interested in protecting Kentucky's economy, I'm interested in having low cost electricity." McConnell was the sponsor of the Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008, which would have allowed states to engage in increased offshore and domestic oil exploration. In 2015, McConnell encouraged state governors not to comply with the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, which was aimed at tackling climate change.