In a new op-ed for Yahoo News, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) defends the fiscal cliff agreement he helped broker as imperfect but necessary to avoid a bigger tax hike.
He also seeks to provoke President Obama into a debate over the upcoming debt limit increase, which the president has promised not to have.
McConnell writes:
Predictably, the President is already claiming that his tax hike on the “rich” isn’t enough. I have news for him: the moment that he and virtually every elected Democrat in Washington signed off on the terms of the current arrangement, it was the last word on taxes. That debate is over. Now the conversation turns to cutting spending on the government programs that are the real source of the nation’s fiscal imbalance. And the upcoming debate on the debt limit is the perfect time to have that discussion.
We simply cannot increase the nation’s borrowing limit without committing to long overdue reforms to spending programs that are the very cause of our debt.
The only way to achieve the balance the President claims to want is by cutting spending. As he himself has admitted, no amount of tax hikes or revenue could possibly keep up with the amount of money Washington is projected to spend in the coming years.
