Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said he’s fully recovered from health issues that led him to freeze in public and he prodded House GOP members to agree on a new speaker to end the paralysis of the US legislative branch.
Questions about the 81-year-old McConnell’s health have lingered since he suffered a serious fall at a political fundraiser in March, then abruptly halted speaking within two months at events.
“I’m completely recovered, and I’m just fine,” he said in an interview airing Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation. “I’m in good shape, completely recovered and back on the job.”
While Democrats are in control of the US Senate, Congress has been hamstrung for almost three weeks by a speakership vacancy in the Republican-led House, where a group of right-wing dissidents instigated the ouster of Kevin McCarthy. Two other candidates failed to win enough support and new candidacies are due by noon Sunday.
“It’s a problem, but I hope it’s going to get solved pretty quickly,” McConnell said. “I have my hands full here in the Senate, and we’re going to do our job and hope the House can get functional here sometime soon.”
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McConnell reaffirmed that he’s broadly aligned with President Joe Biden on key foreign-policy matters. He said he’s “generally in the same place” as Biden on US aid for Israel and Ukraine, and that he opposes decoupling the two issues.
“I just think that’s a mistake,” he said. “I know there are some Republicans in the Senate, and maybe more in the House, saying Ukraine is somehow different. I view it as all interconnected.”
Biden said last week he’s requesting almost $106 billion in emergency funding for aid to Ukraine and Israel and to reinforce the US-Mexico border. Meanwhile, the US government is approaching its next funding deadline in November.
