Mitch McConnell on Fox News Sunday
Mitch McConnell
wants to take a bite out of Medicare benefits:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) says substantial Medicare cuts must be part of a spending and deficit cut package to get his support to raise the debt limit.
In a Capitol briefing with reporters Friday, McConnell declared affirmatively that unspecified Medicare cuts are on the table in bipartisan debt limit negotiations, led by Vice President Joe Biden, and, he expects, will be part of the solution. But in response to a question from TPM, he went further than he has in the past in laying down a marker on that issue. Medicare cuts must be part of that deal to get his support -- even if negotiators manage to find trillions of dollars in savings elsewhere, even if his other priorities are met.
"To get my vote, for me, it's going to take short term [cuts, via spending caps]... Both medium and long-term, entitlements.," McConnell said. "Medicare will be part of the solution."
To clarify, I asked "To clarify, if [the Biden group] comes up with big cuts, trillions of dollars worth of cuts, but without substantially addressing Medicare, it won't get your vote?"
"Correct," McConnell said.
This is consistent with what McConnell said last weekend on Fox News Sunday, when he told Chris Wallace that the need to raise the debt ceiling creates leverage to slash Medicare and Medicaid.
But while McConnell's rhetoric sounds tough, he's basically irrelevant. Senate Republicans are in the minority, and Democrats don't need his vote to raise the debt limit. In fact, it's hard to see any scenario under which he votes to raise the debt limit unless Democrats agree to a bad deal.
There's always a slim chance McConnell could support a filibuster of the debt limit, but given the defections he had over the Ryan plan, it's hard to see him throwing the U.S. into default simply to win support for cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. (And if Senate Republicans really are willing to do something that destructive, then there was no way a deal could have been reached with them in the first place.)
On the Republican side, the only thing that really matters is how things play out in the House. It's possible they'll end up bluffing their way into a deal they couldn't have otherwise gotten, but if that happens, it won't have anything to do with Mitch McConnell.