Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in an interview with Punchbowl News compared President Biden’s proposed Supreme Court reforms to the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol.
“That’s what some people were trying to do Jan. 6 — to break the system of handing an administration from one to the next,” McConnell said in the interview, referring to the proposed reforms. “We can have our arguments, but we ought to not try to break the rules.”
The reforms that Biden has backed include 18-year term limits, which would allow a president to appoint a new justice every two years, alongside a binding code of conduct.
McConnell said earlier this week that the term limits will end up “dead on arrival” in the legislative branch.
“I couldn’t be more disappointed. This is a man who was chairman of the Judiciary Committee for a long time. He absolutely knows what he recommended is unconstitutional, to try to limit the terms of the Supreme Court justices who under the Constitution are appointed for life,” McConnell said.
McConnell isn’t the only conservative to have gone after the proposed reforms. Former Attorney General William Barr also criticized the reforms in an op-ed published by Fox News earlier this week.
“Americans need to understand that the campaign to radically change the Court is coming. While current proposals like term limits for the longest-serving justices and an imposed code of ethics threaten the Constitution and the separation of powers, the far left is demanding that Court be packed with additional liberal justices,” Barr and Kelly Shackelford, president, CEO and chief counsel for First Liberty Institute, said in the op-ed.
Vice President Harris, whom Biden has endorsed for president, has embraced the reforms.
The Hill has reached out to the White House.