Mitch McConnell

Soon after Mitch McConnell joined the debt limit talks, his suspicions grew. An agreement with President Obama on raising the limit by $2.4 trillion​—​and tied to serious spending cuts​—​looked impossible. The more he heard from Obama and his aides in the private sessions at the White House, the more he felt that no good could come from the talks. They would lead to a bad deal, harm to Republicans, or both.

Mitch McConnell’s plan, as Eric Cantor and Jim DeMint said tonight, is “going nowhere.” Which is where it deserved to go. It was too clever by half, transparently cynical, probably unconstitutional, and Rube Goldberg-like in its incomprehensibility.

Roll Call: 

Senate Republicans mounted a bold offensive today against President Obama’s effort to force them to accept a tax hike as part of a bipartisan agreement to raise the debt limit.

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said this morning that Congress will not raise taxes this year to reduce the budget deficit, favoring instead a pro-growth agreement as a solution to debt ceiling debate.

“I think I can safely say this Congress is not going to raise taxes,” McConnell said. “So why are we still talking about this?” McConnell argued that if Congress wanted to raise taxes, the simplest way would be to increase them on those individuals making over a million dollars a year.

It was no accident that Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, spoke first. Senate Republicans had adopted a division of labor for their session at the White House last week with President Obama. Eleven of them addressed the president, touching on spending cuts and raising the debt limit.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell will vote against increasing the debt limit unless President Obama agrees to spending cuts and long term reforms that satisfy the bond market, as well as foreign investors, and “astonish the American people.”

"Wal-Mart: Our shoppers are 'running out of money'"

"McConnell Turns the Tables on Budget Vote."

The Ben Bernanke word cloud: "For bonus points try to find the word 'jobs' in there."

In remarks on the Senate floor, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell backs up his Republican colleagues in the House: 

“Today, the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Congressman Paul Ryan, is releasing a serious and detailed plan for getting our nation’s fiscal house in order.

The top Republicans in each house of Congress are making the case, in their respective ways, that the holdout on passing a budget for Fiscal Year 2011 is Harry Reid and the Democratic majority in the Senate. Politico reports on the John Boehner strategy:

House Speaker John Boehner appeared in front of reporters and television cameras for a fourth straight day, an unusual move for Boehner, to say that he has not agreed to any compromise to prevent a shutdown on April 8 —just seven days away.

The boss claims that this was slipped under his hotel room door in New York late last night: