Mitch McConnell on the Debt Negotiations

[Valin]

Hugh Hewitt Show:

Senator McConnell was my guest today. The transcript:


HH: Joined now by GOP leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Senator McConnell, always a pleasure, welcome.

MM: Glad to be with you.

HH: How did it go at the White House today?

MM: Well, we continue to talk. You know, I think that it’s going to be very difficult to get this president to do the kind of spending reduction package that we really need, without tax increases. He will only go so far without insisting on tax increases in order to get a bigger package. And that’s a place where I don’t believe a single Republicans in the House or Senate are willing to go. So the question is, can we get him to sign enough spending reductions without tax increases to make it a big enough deal to be worth passing. And it’s been a challenge.
(Snip)

HH: Do you see any evidence on the President’s part, Senator McConnell, that he understands the depth of the problem of this kind of deficit spending? Does he ever talk…

MM: Yeah, I think actually he does, Hugh. It’s just that he wants to deal with it by an approach that we think helps finance a bigger government. I mean, he has driven spending as a percentage of gross domestic product from 21% up to 24.5%, and we think he’s trying to force us to raise taxes to help keep it that big in perpetuity. We’re not going to do that. We do not believe that this level of government is appropriate for America’s future. I mean, for the last two or three decades, government spending as a percentage of GDP has been about 21%. Revenue’s been a little bit short of that. Revenue is down now because of the bad economy. What he wants to do is to get us to force revenue up to finance a much bigger government in perpetuity. That beings to make you look a lot like a Western European country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU2oEZoy7Tg