Mitch McConnell: Sen. Schumer's 'On Another Planet'

NewsBusters.org ^ | November 11, 2012 | Tim Graham

[Kaslin]

Stephen Moore of The Wall Street Journal interviewed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who talked tough. "I am not willing to raise taxes to turn off the sequester. Period." He said Sen. Chuck Schumer is "on another planet" to think Republicans would just raise tax rates and close loopholes.

Moore noted this is a negotiating position. “This isn't to say that next week, when the lame-duck congressional session begins to negotiate some kind of budget solution, taxes are off the table. Mr. McConnell is a realist.” And Obama will come looking to strike deals with moderate Republicans:

It isn't at all certain that Mr. McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner will be able to hold their troops together. The senator understands that Mr. Obama will try to cut a deal with other senators—Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina—but Mr. McConnell doubts that the tactic will work. "We have differences on other issues, but on taxes I can't think of a single member of my conference from Maine to Texas who thought he was sent here to Washington to raise taxes on anybody or anything."

...I ask him about the recent counterproposal by Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer that Republicans should abandon tax reform of the kind that passed in 1986 and lowered rates in return for fewer loopholes, and instead should both close loopholes and keep tax rates high to lower the deficit. "He's on another planet," Mr. McConnell replies, and doesn't seem to be kidding.

Would Republicans accept the liberal dream of a value-added tax as a new revenue machine? "There won't be any new tax. It's not going to happen in this Congress," he says.

What is clear about the coming tax-cliff negotiations is that Mr. McConnell doesn't trust the White House after the debacle of the debt-ceiling nonsolution in July 2011.

"The speaker and I spent an endless amount of time in the first half of 2011 trying to get the president to do what we all know has to be done if we're going to save the country," Mr. McConnell says. "Until we adjust the entitlement programs to fit the demographics of today's America, you can't fix the problem. You can't tax your way out of it. You can't cut health-care providers as a way out of it. But Democrats laughed at those ideas even when we offered a quarter-trillion of higher revenues largely taken from high-income people."

....What is also evident from our conversation is that Mr. McConnell and his colleagues don't trust the president and his underlings even in closed-door meetings. "He was never serious in 2011 about solving the debt problem. What happened was the president set the crossbar so high on taxes that he knew we couldn't get a deal." Did Mr. Obama intentionally sabotage the deal? "Sure, it was clear to me in retrospect that the whole strategy for re-election was to energize his liberal base."

Yet Mr. McConnell is convinced that a deal isn't hopeless, and he mentions the one time in Mr. Obama's first term that Democrats and Republicans reached an agreement. "I was the one who personally negotiated with Joe Biden the extension of the current tax rates" after the 2010 midterm elections. "When the president said, 'I'm for it,' 40 Senate Democrats voted to extend the Bush tax cuts, which leads me to my point: Without the president, we can't fix this problem."

[C. Edmund Wright]

maybe word hasn’t reached the tennessee mountains yet, but talk is how a lot of our politics is done now a days. Boehner’s weak talk is a major part of his problem. But go ahead, and make sure you do not enjoy the moment. That will accomplish, well, nothing.......which is even chepaer than talk....

[K-oneTexas]

Agree. Mitch is a go along to get along kinda guy. He will not put up a fight, maybe he’ll look tough in the MSM but cave in the Senate Chamber.

[tennmountainman]

You actually think Smuckie and The Gobbler are enemies in that Senate
Club.
Mind if I ping you when The Gobbler votes for this coming Grandest of all Bargains and Amnesty to see if u still have that thrill up your leg?

[PubliusMM]

I do not hold out any hope that the pubbies have the stones for this fight.
Sane, thinking Americans ALL know that the answer here is, “Let it crash.” The fiscal cliff is going to happen, with all that entails. Better now than later. Better with us than with our children and grandchildren.

Bring it, Zero. Let’s get it over with and be done with you and your socialism.

[C. Edmund Wright]

You and your buddies go pick the vegetables, mow the grass at the Wal Mart, and make up the beds at the motel 6. That must be your career ladder. I see what obsesses you. Bye.

[tennmountainman]

Bye

[SeminoleCounty]

Milquetoast Mitch is so spineless...he is going to let the Dems walk all over the GOP

Need a new Senate minority leader...one with some gonads.

[PMAS]

Didn’t Schumer come out and say he was not for raising taxes for households making over $250k because it affect to many NYers, but he was for raising taxes for those making over $1 million ?

[Lancey Howard]

I think both men realize fully that caving on taxes means - - literally - - the demise of the GOP.
If mutterings about turd parties make them nervous now, wait’ll they cave on taxes. The shouts for turd parties will be not only deafening, they will, I have little doubt, actually lead to the creation of a new, bona fide political organization. The rats fully understand this, too.

So, no... Boehner and McConnell will not cave on taxes. Period.

[Venturer]

Mitch is talking a good game. Let’s wait and see what he does.

[C. Edmund Wright]

That does sound a bit familiar now that hyou mention it.

[driftdiver]

Boehner is a major reason we’re in this mess. He should have never agreed to that super committee of 12 in the first place.

[Alaska Wolf]

" He said Sen. Chuck Schumer is "on another planet"

Then quit playing ball with the scumbags! .

[skinkinthegrass]

I think both men realize fully that caving on
taxes means- -literally- -the demise of the GOP...
So, no... Boehner and McConnell will not cave on taxes. Period.what you say is correct....but, then again..there's a long history...
of these two backstabbing; the other & conservatives, pandering
to O'Bozos' liberal press-itudes for "good air-time"

[skinkinthegrass]

thanks, for the post / thread.A Kentucky Ping.

...for those interested. :D

Mitch McConnell: Sen. Schumer's 'On Another Planet'
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2958409/posts?page=29

[skinkinthegrass]

A Kentucky Ping.

...for those interested. :D

Mitch McConnell: Sen. Schumer's 'On Another Planet'
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2958409/posts?page=29

[skinkinthegrass]

A Kentucky Ping.

...for those interested. :D

Mitch McConnell: Sen. Schumer's 'On Another Planet'
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2958409/posts?page=29

[Theodore R.]

Whenever McC speaks up, you know it is double talk, but the people of KY believe him for some strange reason.

[Bratch]

Well, to be honest, a race between Mitch and Ashley isn't much of a choice.

[PMAS]

I would like to see what Schumer has to say about it now.