Blunt Supports McConnell's Punt
Roll Call reports that Sen. Roy Blunt supports Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) plan to give the President "sweeping power to increase the government’s borrowing authority" without Congressional approval.
As has been noted elsewhere, McConnell's "plan" is an acknowledgement that you can't do serious deficit reduction without new revenues.
The initial analysis from MSNBC's First Take:
Yet perhaps the biggest takeaway from McConnell’s proposal is that it exposes Republicans leaders for not acting on the deficit and debt when they had the power to do so, and when they had a Democratic president willing to do things that probably won't be seen for a generation. When Obama put $4 trillion in deficit reduction on the table (as long as Republicans added revenues to the mix), they walked away. And when they had Democrats tying spending cuts to the debt increase, they ended up punting. Here’s the lesson we’ve all learned: What the GOP cares about is low taxes and shrinking government. The deficit and debt are only means to that end.
