Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Thursday defended his vote to advance the clean debt limit hike on Wednesday.
“My job is to protect the country when I can,” McConnell said at a campaign appearance in Louisville, Ky., according to WHAS 11, “and to step up and lead on those occasions when it’s required. That’s what I did.”
McConnell and other members of Republican leadership in the Senate voted to break Sen. Ted Cruz’s filibuster of the debt ceiling bill so that it could be voted on by the chamber. McConnell was quickly criticized by his Tea Party challenger in the Senate race, Matt Bevin.
McConnell said that a clean debt limit bill was not ideal.
“My preference is for a debt ceiling to carry additional legislation that does something about the debt,” he said at the campaign event. “I’ve obviously demonstrated that. I negotiated the Budget Control Act with Vice President Biden in August of 2011. It led to a deficit reduction package that actually reduced government spending for two years in a row, for the first time since right after the Korean War.”
[H/t Huffington Post]
