2014 KY Senate debate: on Budget & Economy

Matt Bevin: AdWatch: Supporting a debt-limit increase is too liberal

The ad features Bevin speaking direct-to-camera, declaring "after caving yet again to President Obama on the debt ceiling, all that Mitch McConnell can do is run false attack ads."

A narrator goes on to declare that "thirty years is enough," and calls McConnell "too liberal" and "too long."

McConnell has attacked Bevin in radio ads, knocking him for what the campaign sees as a "pattern of deceptions" from Bevin. McConnell's vote to raise the debt limit drew heavy criticism from conservatives and was seen as a risky vote for him. But the senator retains a solid lead over Bevin, and is heavily favored in the primary.

Matt Bevin: No budget deal; let the sequester cuts take place

McConnell hasn't expressed an opinion specifically about the Ryan-Murray compromise but he has urged other Republicans to stand their ground on the budget and allow another round of sequester-related budget cuts to go into effect in January.

Bevin said he doesn't believe the plan's promised deficit reduction will ever happen: "Mitch McConnell is dodging a major issue. This deal is bad for America because it raises spending in the short-term for long-term cuts that everyone knows will never happen. McConnell should lead Republicans in demanding a deal that, at a bare minimum, sticks to the existing savings of the sequester."

Mitch McConnell: Proud of role in high-profile deal to end federal shutdown

McConnell said that his high-profile part in the deal that ended the shutdown and extended the debt ceiling had taken the air out of Grimes' message. "It steps on the whole narrative of her campaign, and so she's desperately trying to criticize something I was praised for by Harry Reid, among others," McConnell said.

The Grimes campaign fired back by noting a number of past remarks McConnell has made proudly proclaiming himself a "guardian of gridlock." A Grimes spokesperson said, "It is an embarrassment that McConnell waited until the 11th hour to stop the manufactured crisis that he and members of Congress created. It is not heroic for McConnell to do his job and reopen the government. Kentuckians now have to pay for McConnell's Washington dysfunction."

Mitch McConnell: Supports sequester cuts: 2.4% out of $3.6 trillion budget

McCONNELL: The question is: Are we going to keep the commitment we made to the American people a year and a half ago, a bipartisan agreement signed by the president, that we would reduce spending without raising taxes by this amount of money in this fiscal year? This modest reduction of 2.4% in spending over the next six months is a little more than the average American experienced just two months ago, when the payroll tax holiday expired.

Q: You call this a modest cut, but it will cost about 750,000 jobs.

McCONNELL: By any objective standard, cutting 2.4% out of $3.6 trillion is certainly something we can do.

Q: Over a short period of time?

McCONNELL: The sequester was actually the president's idea. He knows that we were not going to raise taxes to achieve this spending reduction this year. The American people need to know that we have a spending addiction in Washington. We've added $6 trillion to the national debt in just four years.

Jack Reed: Address the sequester & debt ceiling without any new taxes

McCONNELL: These last-minute deals are no way to run the government. These three issues are coming up: the sequester, the debt ceiling, and the continuing resolution to operate the government. Look, the biggest problem confronting the country is not taxes. It's spending. We don't have this problem because we tax too little; we have it because we spend too much.

Q: The president has said he's willing to engage in more discussions over the sequester and the government shutdown, but that would also include new revenues.

McCONNELL: The tax issue is finished, over, completed. Now the question is, what are we going to do about the biggest problem confronting our country and our future? And that's our spending addiction. It's time to confront it.

Q: You will not accept any new revenues in any new deal?

McCONNELL: Yeah, absolutely. The tax issue is behind us.