James R. Carroll

LCJ

WASHINGTON – Sen. Mitch McConnell, the next majority leader, said Friday that in response to a "war on coal" waged by President Barack Obama, "I'm going to go to war with him."

He pledged that he and his fellow Republicans would combat the White House "in any way that we can" in the next Congress and signaled that a primary weapon will be using spending bills to limit funding of the Environmental Protection Agency, which wants to reduce carbon emissions.

"What the administration has done to the coal industry is a true outrage," he said, referring to the loss of 7,000 mining jobs in Kentucky. "So he had a war on coal and, honestly, I'm going to go to war with him over coal."

But McConnell also said he hoped for a "bourbon summit" with the president. "I'm sure it will happen," he said, adding no formal negotiations for such a meeting are underway with the White House.

Thus McConnell offered both confrontational and conciliatory messages in an exclusive interview with The Courier-Journal in his Capitol office, his first sit-down conversation with a media organization since being re-elected as the Senate Republican leader on Thursday.

He remains minority leader until the lame-duck session of Congress ends next month. When the new Congress convenes in January with the GOP holding more seats than the Democrats, McConnell will become majority leader.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

McConnell made it clear Friday that he thinks last week's elections, in which the GOP maintained House control and gained Senate control, was a clear directive from voters — a directive, he charged, that Obama is ignoring.

The Kentuckian cited Obama's determination to use executive orders to grant legal status to undocumented immigrants, his new agreement with China on climate change, and his involvement in the net neutrality issue as "discouraging" examples of presidential obliviousness to political realities.

"By the way, Mr. President, there was an election," the senator said. "You guys didn't do very well, not just in the House and Senate, but did you notice Republican governors got elected in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois, three of the bluest states in America?

"And maybe this is just talk and he will finally do what I would call a Clintonian pivot to the middle," McConnell continued. "But, boy, the early signs are he just wants to pick a fight with the voters who clearly (said) the single biggest factor in this election, everybody agrees, was him — him — there's no getting around it. And yet he seems to be saying 'I don't care what message you sent, here's what I'm going to do.' "

On the coal issue, McConnell said the spending bills Congress passes each year are "the best and most significant power" lawmakers have to hinder the administration's plans to reduce carbon pollution from coal. Kentucky is a major coal-producing state and heavily dependent on coal generation for its electricity.

McConnell will have a willing partner in a fellow Kentucky Republican who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Hal Rogers. Like McConnell, Rogers has been highly critical of the EPA's carbon-emission plans. Rogers' panel writes the spending bills.

"So regardless of the president's views, there may be a number of Democrats who have similar views about this whole effort through EPA," McConnell said. "We don't know for sure because we haven't been able to vote. But that will change and so we'll see what kind of bipartisan support there is to push back against these onerous regulations."

As he did during his campaign for re-election, McConnell said the Republican-controlled Congress next year also would go after alleged political abuses by the Internal Revenue Service and move to roll back provisions of a banking reform bill under which, the senator said, "community bankers are struggling."

"The administration's biggest hit on the economy has been the aggressive over-regulation that has descended on virtually all of American private enterprise and that's the reason we've had such a slow recovery after the Great Recession of 2008," McConnell said. "It's reasonable to assume that we'll be pushing back against this bureaucratic excess across the board."

The Senate GOP leader, sitting next to a coffee table on which sat a copy of "The Federalist," said he still hoped Obama "has an epiphany and decides to honor the results of the election."

"Because, look, we've got two years here. Divided government has frequently been pretty good," McConnell said.

"Just because the American people picked a divided government doesn't mean they're saying 'we don't want you to do anything,' " he said. "I think what they're saying is, 'We want you to work on things that you could agree with,' which obviously is going to mean in the political center."

Reporter James R. Carroll can be reached at (703) 854-8945. Follow him on Twitter@JRCarrollCJ.