McConnell: Increased Debt Limit Must Come With Spending Cuts

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wrote in an editorial for Yahoo on Thursday that Congress can’t responsibly increase the nation’s borrowing limit without also cutting spending significantly.

President Barack Obama will need to convince Democrats in Congress that large swaths of the federal budget need to be cut in order to fix the long-standing fiscal crisis plaguing the nation’s finances, he said.

“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,” he said. “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.”

Responding to complaints about the tax deal he struck with Vice President Joe Biden, the Kentucky Republican said that, while it was an imperfect deal, keeping taxes down for most Americans, instead of raising them on everybody, was the right thing to do.

The upcoming debates about increasing the debt ceiling and reaching an agreement on the automatic spending cuts of the fiscal cliff that Congress delayed until March, are the chance for real changes to be made to the budget.

Democrats will have to be willing to consider all portions of the budget. This includes, McConnell wrote, entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security which nobody in the Democratic Party wants to even look at.

The new Congress taking office Thursday, McConnell said, “presents a perfect opportunity to tackle the single-greatest challenge facing our nation: reigning in the out-of-control federal spending that threatens to permanently alter our economy and dim the prospects and opportunities of future generations of Americans.”