Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) was critical of President Donald Trump's "excessive expectations" regarding legislative timelines during a Rotary Club gathering on Monday.
McConnell said that he would ask the audience for a show of hands but knew they were already saying that Congress has not done anything this session, a view that he described as "extremely irritating."
"A Congress goes on for two years," McConnell said. "Part of the reason I think that the storyline is that we haven't done much is because, in part, the president and others have set these early timelines about things need to be done by a certain point."
"Our new president, of course, has not been in this line of work before, and I think had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the Democratic process," McConnell continued.
He went on to say that part of the reason that people believe Congress is underperforming is because of too many "artificial deadlines" unrelated to the "reality of the complexity of legislating," which he said has not been completely understood.
"What I am asking of you is to judge this Congress when it finishes, how much have we done to make America competitive again and to grow again," McConnell said. "And that's part of America—Make America Great Again, which is what the president talks about so much."
McConnell was emotional late last month after the Obamacare repeal vote failed in the Senate, with three Republican senators voting against it.
"This is clearly a disappointing moment from skyrocketing costs to plummeting choices and collapsing markets," McConnell said. "Our constituents have suffered through an awful lot under Obamacare. We thought they deserved better. It's why I and many of my colleagues did as we promised and voted to repeal this failed law."