McConnell: Unyielding on Iran, defiant on Koch brothers

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday rejected suggestions that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delay his controversial speech to Congress, and he vowed action on a bill to toughen sanctions on Iran despite White House opposition.

"I think we should go ahead and have the speech because the issue is very timely in this country, and this is an American initiative, not an Israeli initiative," McConnell said. The address to a joint meeting of Congress, which was scheduled without advance notice to the White House and just before Israeli elections, has created a furor in Washington and in Israel.

McConnell defended the invitation. "I'm not sure what the custom is," he said, dismissing the idea of a breach of protocol. "We now have a new Republican Congress. It has a different agenda in many respects from that of the president. We think the Iran sanctions bill is important and ought to be dealt with in the near future."

The senator's remarks to USA TODAY's Capital Download, a weekly video newsmaker series, came amid intense international pressure and political jockeying over Iran's nuclear program. Negotiators face a March 24 deadline to reach an agreement. In Washington, a proposal to put more sanctions on Tehran if there isn't a deal has divided Democrats and drawn a veto threat from President Obama in his State of the Union Address.

Netanyahu is expected to make warnings about the threat from a nuclear-armed Iran the centerpiece of his address, now set for March 3. The White House has announced Obama won't meet with the Israeli prime minister when he visits Washington, citing the closeness of the Israeli elections on March 17.

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In the interview, McConnell was unyielding on Iran, defiant on the right of the Koch brothers' political network to spend close to a billion dollars ahead of the 2016 elections — and clearly delighted with his new status as majority leader. "The big advantage to the majority is to set the different agenda," he said. The latest example of that was taking place just down the hallway, where the Senate was debating a long series of amendments to a bill approving the Keystone XL Pipeline.

He declined to specify when the Iran sanctions bill would be debated. Ten Senate Democrats who support it said Tuesday they wanted to wait until the March deadline before moving ahead.

'NO CONSENSUS'

The 72-year-old Kentucky senator also poured cold water on a rules change being considered by some Senate Republicans to prevent Supreme Court nominations from being subject to filibuster, though he seemed to like the substance of the idea. "The custom up to 2000 was that nominees would get an up-or-down vote," he said, noting that despite considerable opposition even Clarence Thomas was confirmed without having to overcome a filibuster.

However, McConnell went on, "There just is no consensus at the moment (among Republicans), and I think where we're probably going to end up is with the status quo."

If Republicans decided to move ahead with the rules change, he said he would require 67 votes for passage. When Democrats were in control in 2013, they protected some judicial and other nominations from filibuster but enacted the rule in a maneuver that required only a 51-vote majority.

"They broke the rules of the Senate in order to change the rules of the Senate," he said, fuming still and calling it "the worst thing the Democrats did."

McConnell defended the announcement this week that the conservative political network led by the Koch brothers was prepared to spend $889 million ahead of next year's elections. Some of the contributions and expenditures won't be subject to public disclosure.

"The Koch brothers as citizens have every right, just like Tom Steyer does on the left, to spend every penny they've got on political expression, if they chose to," he said, a reference to the liberal California billionaire. "I don't think that's anything that threatens American democracy."

When asked about the jaw-dropping amount of money involved, he replied with questions of his own. "How much speech is too much? That's always an interesting question to ask. How many people have to sit down and shut up in order to make the process work? My view is that in a free country with free speech, everybody ought to be as free to express themselves as Gannett."

The Gannett Co. owns USA TODAY, The Louisville Courier-Journal and other news outlets across the country.

While he has supported disclosure for contributions to candidates and political parties, he said those rules shouldn't apply to the outside groups such as those financed by the Koch family. "There are many people who are concerned about harassment by the IRS," he said, "and there have been a lot of government reprisals here in the Obama administration directed toward political activists."

WHAT'S THE GOAL?

The Senate leader parried a query about his comment in October 2010 to National Journal, when he famously said that "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

What was his single most important goal now?

"The president of course went all out to defeat me last year, so I think we can safely say I didn't defeat him and he didn't defeat me, and the American people want us both here," he said. "And the question is what can we do with the mandate that we've been given? And I think it's got to be in the political center."