Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor Monday regarding the need to reduce Washington spending and make reforms to key entitlement programs:

“As we reengage in the ongoing debate over government spending this week, it’s worth noting that some on the other side appear to have already decided to fold up their tents.

“Last week, Republicans showed we could change the status quo in Washington by cutting government spending. It was a small step, but it was a step in the right direction.

“And some of us were hopeful momentum was finally building for the kind of bipartisan consensus that would enable us to cut even more government red ink this week.

“Unfortunately, the Assistant Majority Leader seems to have had enough. Yesterday he said that cutting $6 billion pushes the limits of what’s needed to live within our means. This is ludicrous.

“So far this fiscal year, Washington has spent nearly $650 billion more than it’s taken in. That’s a little more than $4 billion a day that Washington is spending over and above what it has to spend. And Senator Durbin thinks Democrats in Congress have pushed the limits of responsibility by agreeing to cut $6 billion more for the entire year?

“Imagine if every American had the same approach to their credit card bills. Imagine calling up your credit card company and asking, first, if you could just freeze you’re out-of-control spending habits in place. Then when they say no, imagine telling them you don’t want to cut down your monthly spending because you prefer living outside your means. This is the logic of our friends on the other side.

“According to this logic, they’d rather draw a line in the sand than agree to cut another dime in spending at a time when Washington is spending about $4 billion more every day than it’s taking in.

“Republicans had been hopeful that we could make progress and reach a bipartisan solution on this issue. So it’s my hope that the Assistant Majority Leader was speaking for himself and not for his entire conference.

“This, of course, is the debate that most people in Washington will continue to be focused on this week.

“And it’s an important one.

“But focusing on day-to-day expenses threatens to obscure an even larger threat. And here I’m referring, of course, to entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Anyone who has looked at these programs closely knows they’re becoming unaffordable– that doing nothing risks not only the future of these programs themselves but our nation’s future as well.  

“And anyone who looks at history also knows that the best time to address a crisis like this is a time like now, when the two parties share power in Washington. 

“I’ve made the case for action publicly and in private conversations with the White House.

“As Republican Leader, I put this issue front and center my first day on the job.

“Four years ago, I came to the floor and said that the demographic changes taking place in America made it incumbent upon us as a body to reform Social Security.

“Two years later, when the American people put a Democrat in the White House, I renewed my call for action.

“I said that Republicans stood ready to work with the President on entitlement reform.

“And I repeated that call again four months ago when the voters decided to put Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives.

“Throughout this time, I've held out hope that our friends on the other side would rise to the occasion, if not when Republicans controlled the White House, at least when they did.

“I was encouraged further when President Obama said repeatedly in 2009 that his administration would seek to work with us on serious entitlement reform that preserves a safety net for our seniors, for people with disabilities, and which also puts it on a firmer, stable footing for generations to come.

“The President has acknowledged the seriousness of the problem. He has noted himself that costs are escalating even as the population s getting older, creating the perfect storm for a fiscal crisis that dwarfs even today’s budget crisis — as urgent as it is.

“If both parties agree on all this, I thought, then there's no reason we can't do this for the good of the country.

“The urgency for action has only intensified in recent months, as we’ve seen the uproar in a number of state capitals.

“Every state is different, but the problems in every one of them can be summed up pretty easily: lawmakers from New Jersey to California and just about everywhere in between made promises they couldn’t keep.

“But the promises lawmakers in Washington have made puts the states to shame. If you add up the unfunded liabilities in all 50 states, you get, by one estimate, about $3 trillion — total. Add up Washington’s promises on Social Security and Medicare alone, and it’s more than $50 trillion.

“Fifty trillion dollars that we've promised to the American people that we don't know how we're going to pay for. 

“Something must be done.

“And now is the time to do it.

“Republicans are ready and willing.

“Where is the President?

“Suddenly, at the moment when we can actually do something about all this, he’s silent.

“As one columnist in the Washington Post put it, `For a man who won office talking about change we can believe in, [the President] can be a strangely passive president.’

“On the greatest fiscal challenge of the day, he appears to have taken a pass.

“This is obviously deeply disappointing to me personally, given my repeated raising of this issue.

“But more importantly, it should be deeply disappointing to every American who had reason to hope that we could tackle these issues in a moment of divided government.

“And it should be disappointing to all those who believed this President when he pledged he would shake up the status quo in Washington.

“Past presidents had the foresight to seize their moment, to reach across party lines to solve an earlier funding problem with Social Security as well as welfare reform.

“So it’s not a question of whether it’s possible but a question of whether the President has the courage to step up to the challenges we face. 

“In this case, one can’t help but wonder if the President who came into office promising change has been changed by the office instead.

“I hope I'm wrong about this. But all signs point toward inaction on the part of the White House. And in my view, this would be a tragic failure of leadership.”  

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