Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced Tuesday that he does not support the Ryan-Murray budget deal.
“While I appreciate the challenges that House and Senate negotiators faced in crafting the budgetary guidelines, I cannot support the legislation they have agreed to,” McConnell said in a statement. “The Budget Control Act (BCA) was designed to cut spending in the short and long term, and I remain convinced that Congress should continue to adhere to the fiscal restraints it set. For the first time since the Korean War, government spending has declined for two years in a row as a result of the BCA. This was hard-won progress on the road to getting our nation’s fiscal house in order. We should not go back on that commitment.”
McConnell’s mention of the Budget Control Act is similar to the argument a number of 30 House Republicans made in opposition to the two-year Ryan-Murray deal. Recently, those House Republicans sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) calling on the top House Republican to push legislation that would keep government funding at the $967 billion level established through sequestration cuts.
“The Budget Control Act is the law of the land,” the letter, which Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) helped organize, said. “Our Democrat colleagues are not threatening to shut the government down in order to change that.”
