Arriving slightly late to his 8:15 a.m. speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell strode directly to the podium, unable to take advantage of the eggs and bacon breakfast that would be off-limits to lawmakers under ethics legislation awaiting Bush’s signature.
Also off-limits, it turned out, were reporters.
A few minutes into McConnell’s presentation, Chamber of Commerce officials sheepishly told two journalists covering the event that the senator’s aides were demanding that reporters be escorted out.
By then, McConnell had finished prepared remarks to the nation’s biggest business group, accusing Democrats controlling Congress of suffering from a twin obsession: the Iraq war and conducting investigations, instead of getting down to the real work of Congress.
Just as McConnell began a question-and-answer period that started with the topic of energy legislation, Chamber officials shut down coverage, saying the event actually was closed to reporters, despite its billing as a public event on Washington calendars.
Later in the day, Don Stewart, McConnell’s spokesman, said there had been an agreement with the Chamber that the senator’s appearance was to be a “closed briefing,” like many he has done for other groups.
An annoyed Eric Wohlschlegel, executive director of communications at the Chamber, also insisted, “This was a closed event from the very beginning.”
McConnell received the support of the Chamber this year for requiring that business tax breaks be added to the first increase in the U.S. minimum wage in a decade. He also helped defeat a top priority of organized labor, a measure that would have made it easier for workers to unionize.
Maybe McConnell’s best gems came in the Q&A. But during the prepared speech, the four-term Kentucky senator wasn’t giving the business group anything he hasn’t freely told reporters repeatedly on Capitol Hill:
*He’s “deeply disappointed” the new Democratic-controlled Congress has not tackled the “tough issues,” like Social Security;
*Immigration reform turned out to be “too complicated” to work out this year. (Translation: conservative Republicans nuked it);
*Besides their “preoccupation” with the Iraq war, Democrats spend their time dreaming of “taxation, regulation and litigation. It’s in their DNA.”  — Richard Cowan

(Reuters file photo of McConnell)