|
 Interviewed by Reuters, McConnell also said that he and the
president, a Democrat, had discussed possible major tax reform
legislation and that any effort should not focus on the country's
biggest corporations alone, but also include help for small
businesses.
On another international matter McConnell, who takes over in January
as Senate majority leader, said North Korea's computer hacking of
Sony Corp was more serious than an act of vandalism, taking issue
with a characterization Obama had used to describe the cyberattack.
McConnell declined to spell out steps he thought the United States
should take in response.
"This is a serous threat to the United States," he said.
 Speaking by telephone from his home state of Kentucky, McConnell
said he agreed with the Senate's most outspoken critics of Obama's
new Cuba policy, Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and
Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, "that it was a
mistake."
Obama's actions to forge relations and expand commercial ties with
the Communist-led island after half a century of hostility has
divided Republicans in Congress and could weigh on the 2016 campaign
for president.
McConnell said there were some "pretty obvious" ways to keep the
policy from being fully implemented. Only Congress has the power to
remove some barriers to relations with Cuba since "a number of
sanctions" were written into law, he said. He said any U.S.
ambassador to Cuba would require Senate approval.
[to top of second column] |
"Look at Vietnam," McConnell said. "We normalized relations with
them and they are a Communist regime that still represses people.
Sometimes engagement works, sometimes it doesn't."
With many Republicans and Democrats backing tax reform, it could
become an issue in the last two years of Obama's presidency. The
last major reform was in 1986.
While McConnell repeatedly referred to "comprehensive" legislation,
he also stressed that such a measure had yet to take shape and would
require bipartisan agreement.
In pressing for broad reforms that include small businesses,
McConnell said, "It's pretty hard to argue it's a good idea to take
Fortune 500 companies down to 25 percent (tax rate) and leave a
mom-and-pop operation in Louisville in the high 30s."
(Editing by Eric Walsh and Howard Goller)
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