senate majority leader mitch mcconnell told reporters he was still interested in passing targeted legislation for coronavirus relief and he remained focused on the senate business and not the presidential election. he spoke from capitol hill after senate republicans met behind closed doors for their weekly luncheon with the vice president in attendance. >> good afternoon, everyone. we had a good discussion about wrapping up the next couple of months. i think this is a bipartisan and bicameral desire to get an omnibus appropriation bill as senator shelby gave an extensive report about the work that's going on there. i will be talking to the speaker about that as well. i think both sides think it would be better to do an omnibus appropriations bill before the end of the year rather than another short-term so hopefully we can get there. on the possibility of another coronavirus package, it seems to me that with 6.9% unemployment, third-quarter gdp growth of astonishing proportions that even though we still have significant economic problems, we need to think about if we are going to come up with a bipartisan package about what size is appropriate. it seems to me that snag that hung us up for months is still there. i don't think the current situation demands the multitrillion dollar package, so i think it should be highly targeted, very similar to what i put on the floor both in october and september, and of course we are all excited about the vaccine announcement yesterday. the senator knows an awful lot about that. i think the country has a sense of relief that we may be able to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel with regards to this awful virus. in the meantime, we are all trying to emphasize, all of us here in the senate since the first of may until we get a significant number of americans the vaccine we are going to continue to wear a mask and practice social distancing and try to be a good example to the rest of the country. >> thank you and i want to thank my colleagues for the privilege of serving and i look forward to working in the next congress. we have a lot of work ahead of us when it comes to continuing to deal with the pandemic and advancing the agenda for the american people. i'm glad the election is behind us. there were at least three takeaways. one was that there was not a blue wave. there wasn't even a blue ripple. i think the results made it clear that a lot of what the democrats and folks in the media were suggesting was going to have been didn't happen at all. second it was a rejection of the far left schumer pelosi agenda and third, you look at what happened with not a single republican losing the house race but gaining the seats in the house of representatives not a single state legislator slipping in fact republicans gaining ground in the state legislatures and i'm quite confident that after georgia, we will be in the majority here in the united states senate. it was a validation of the things that the republican majority and the republican party are doing to further advance the interest of the american people. so, having taken all that into perspective i think now we have an opportunity to move forward. the presidential race will be resolved at some point but there's a lot of work we have to do for the american people and i look forward to working with our team and our members. hopefully with democrats who decide that they want to work with us now that it's been made clear that what they were trying to put forward is not what the american people want to see happening. that we can get some good things done and deal with the crisis in front of us with respect to the pandemic and hopefully get a reauthorization bill done and q some things up to get the work next year for the american people. >> thank you for mentioning the vaccines. i do think now we are beyond the election and a lot of the skepticism people have had about the effort will go away once people looked seriously at this i think that they are going to see frankly the administration and the congress providing $18 billion to invest in vaccines and therapeutics and about 12.5 billion of that in the vaccines rewrote the chapter of how you do this. we are at least a year ahead of where anybody thought we would have been in february or march of this year. pfizer was a partner, a little different partner and one of these is a little bit different. we are competent in our vaccine and we are sure we are going to get there. if you will guarantee the federal government will distribute and by $2 billion worth of it that is the deal with us. all of these companies plus about three more are all making vaccines as they get near the end of the trial period, so there will be 7 million -- several million copies on day number one and once you get the system started it begins to produce vaccines pretty quickly. i think the distribution effort has been well thought out. the states have all submitted a plan. hopefully the states will all respond to the proposal how it would be allocated to healthcare workers and first responders first and people most in danger of having the worst results if they got the virus. nursing homes would be a big group and then the essential employees, school bus drivers, the teachers, the daycar day cae center workers, grocery store clerks, food processing employee, people in a lot of contact with other people. if they can't get it, they can't give it to you. so every day as you take these groups off the danger zone of the vaccine, not only do they get safer but everybody else gets safer. by the time you get to the end of those groups you've had about 50% of the american population would have had the ability to have the vaccine and then we will see what happens with everybody else. and on those companies that we thought had a better chance of being successful, the american taxpayers are going to lose money on that and if we didn't have a failure we were not trying hard enough or pushing the envelope forward enough. all these vaccines will be different from any of the others and they are all being produced irrespective of what's happening anywhere else. this is big news. i again hope as we now move beyond the election discussion to a real pandemic response discussion that people will appreciate what's happened both with the administration did, and i would suggest most importantly what the congress was willing to appropriate money for. a. >> just a few things this afternoon. coming through this last election cycle which was difficult for so many, we saw some pretty incredible gains by the conservative women and what we can say is this was the year for the gop women. we picked up seats in the house and we are also gaining another woman in the republican conference. so it has been an exciting year and one where we hope young conservative women will take a look at the makeup of congress and determine that there is opportunity out there for them as well. so, very exciting stuff going on. second, of course as the leader mentioned, hopefully we can get a recovery package. i think that's important and it's something i continue to hear even while i was on the campaign trail how iowans hope we could step up and get a targeted relief bill done. there are still so many people that are hurting across the nation and we would love to provide them relief, so we are hopeful that as the speaker will get her caucus together and come up to the table and actually work with us on these efforts and then finally, tomorrow is veterans day. and of course this is an important day for me but i would like to remind all iowans and all americans to just please say thank you to a veteran, someone who's warned the nation's uniform in the armed services and thank you for continuing to contribute to the society we have added the most incredible nation on the face of the planet. thank you. >> this is the third or fourth time the president has alleged fraud without proof. he did it during the primaries and after the general election and he's doing it now. why do you continue to indulge him? >> what i'm going to do in the senate is concentrate on the business that we have left to do, which i mentioned a while ago. the omnibus appropriations bill and may be another coronavirus package. let it go through the various phases that it goes through under the constitution. there will be apparently litigation. those cases will be decided. and then the electoral college will meet and they will have the inauguration. but i am going to concentrate on what we are trying to do in the remainder of this congress. >> was there any fraud in your senate race or any that you know of? >> at the risk of bragging, it wasn't very close. [laughter] [inaudible] in 2004 contributed to the lack of security preparedness. [inaudible] i don't think we will have an interrupted transition to whoever is in the next administration. we need to not act like this is extraordinary. we will get through this period and we will swear in the winter on january 20th, 2021 just like we have every four years since 1793. >> [inaudible] senate democrats spoke to reporters about the coronavirus pandemic, the affordable care act and the results of the 2020 election. senate minority leader chuck schumer also responded to comments made by secretary of state michael pompeo about tr

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