The Hill News

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following statement on the Senate floor Tuesday regarding the status of the President’s request to increase the debt limit:

For more than two years now, Republicans in Washington have stood united in the belief that America would never recover from the economic crisis that struck our nation three years ago -- so long as some in Washington persisted in the mistaken belief that government had the cure.

For most clear-eyed observers, that view has found its clearest vindication in the daily drumbeat of news about lost jobs, shuttered businesses and slumping home values; and in the stories that each of us hears from our constituents about the economic hardships that they continue to face. If anyone was still looking for proof that the President’s economic policies have been a failure, they don’t have! to look any further than the morning papers or their constituent mail.

Indeed, the more the administration insisted on spending and debt as the solution to our problems, the worse those problems became, and the more Americans demanded that the status quo in Washington had to change. But the administration was slow to get the message. After an election that any honest observer saw as a repudiation of its policies, the White House continued to cling to its playbook. As concerns about our debt and deficits grew, the President presented a budget so unequal to the task that not a single Democrat voted for it, not one. And as the nation inched closer to a potential default, the President focused his attention elsewhere.

Read more...