Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that calls for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to step down are a distraction. [WATCH VIDEO]
McConnell said he felt sorry for Sebelius, who heads the department in charge of implementing ObamaCare, because not even Albert Einstein could make it work.
“She works for the president. The president will make a decision about whether he wants to continue her,” McConnell said during a PBS interview when asked if she should resign.
{mosads}“But I think that’s, to some extent, a distraction. The point is, could anybody make it work? I don’t think Albert Einstein could make this thing work. It can’t work. It won’t work. And so I feel sorry for her being put in a position where she’s trying to make something work out that won’t.”
The Republican leader described his conference as a consequential minority, predicting the GOP has an excellent chance of taking back the Senate in 2014 using healthcare as a rallying cry.
“ObamaCare, for example, that you and I have just been discussing is going to be, in my view, the largest and most significant issue in the 2014 election,” he said.
Republicans need to net six seats to take back control of the Senate, and McConnell himself faces a competitive reelection.
He said sooner or later the Obama administration will get the plagued healthcare website fixed, but the larger problem resides in the law itself.
McConnell has long been hesitant to call for Sebelius to resign. Earlier this month, he said it would be impossible for anyone to administer the law when asked if she should step down.
This week, Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) became the latest Republican to call for her resignation. Dozens more Republicans in the House and a few in the Senate have done the same.
Sebelius has pushed back on those calls, saying she does not work for the Republicans in Congress who are calling for her to step aside.
Democrats have largely expressed support in Sebelius a month into the healthcare law’s rocky rollout.