Speaking at a recent event hosted by the conservative Ripon Society, Senate Republican Chair John Barrasso, of Wyoming, said he’s determined to make President Biden a “one-half-term president,” echoing comments made by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2010 about hindering then-President Barack Obama.
“I’m looking forward to a very successful 2022. Mitch McConnell came under a lot of criticism for saying at one point he wanted to make sure that Barack Obama was a one-term president. I want to make Joe Biden a one-half-term president,” Barrasso said, according to Politico. “And I want to do that by making sure they no longer have the House, Senate and White House.”
During the event, Barrasso claimed that a Democratic senator told him that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., predicted that Democrats would lose the House and Senate in 2022.
“One of the Democrat senators told me that he said, ‘Look, we can do all this spending and taxes, but we’re going to lose the House or the Senate, or maybe both in two years.’ To which Bernie [Sanders] said, ‘Oh, we’re going to lose them. We’ve got to do everything now. This is our only chance!’” the senator told the crowd.
The Republican leader also accused Democrats of writing legislation designed to fail to push for the elimination of the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass a bill.
“This is the month that John Thune calls ‘Senator Schumer’s designed-to-fail month,’ because everything he’s bringing up is a hot button issue for them, and we’re going to stop all of it,” he said before diving into red meat talking points.
“We did with the so-called Paycheck Fairness, which doesn’t really do what it says. You’re going to have gun legislation going after the Second Amendment. There’s a whole host of things they’re going to bring up in June and Schumer wants all of these to fail so then he can then say, ‘Look what they’re doing. They’re stopping the president. We need to overturn the filibuster,'” Barrasso said.
“All of this is intended to ramp up animosity against Republicans and get the Democrats all in line. They’re not in line now.”
The White House released a statement responding to Barrasso’s fiery remarks.
“The President looks forward to continuing to deliver for the American people, continuing to make government work for them again, and continuing to bring our country together — after having reduced cases of the worst public health crisis in over a century by more than 90%, signed historic economic legislation that helped fuel unprecedented job growth for any administration’s first 100 days in office, protected Americans’ health care, and restored our leadership and competitiveness in the world,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.”
