Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Thursday that the Senate will not take up a House bill that would force President Trump to keep the U.S. in the Paris climate agreement.
“This futile gesture to handcuff the U.S. economy through the ill-fated Paris deal will go nowhere here in the Senate,” McConnell said from the Senate floor. “We’re in the business of actually helping middle-class families, not inventing new obstacles to throw in their paths.”
{mosads}His comments came shortly before the House passed a measure that would prevent the administration from using funding to withdraw from the 2015 deal.
Though the legislation easily passed the House, McConnell’s comments underscore that the bill is dead on arrival in the GOP-controlled Senate.
McConnell has touted his ability to block House-passed legislation, calling himself the “Grim Reaper” for progressive policy ideas.
“Tons of red tape and real economic damage for zero measurable effect. That’s my friends across the aisle in a nutshell on this issue,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Thursday.
Democrats have hammered Republicans in the Senate, arguing they have failed to address the issue of climate change since they took control of the chamber in 2015.
McConnell forced a vote on the Green New Deal resolution last month, in an effort to force Democrats to go on the record over the progressive proposal. Most Senate Democrats ended up voting present.
“I don’t intend to spend all of our time doing that sort of thing,” McConnell told Fox News’s “Special Report with Bret Baier,” referring to the Green New Deal vote. “But once in a while people oughta go on record and decide whether they are willing to vote for what they say they’re for.”