McConnell admits leveraging U.S. default threat, ‘a hostage that’s worth ransoming.’
There’s not much to say here, but this is a pretty amazing admission by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell:
‘I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting,’ he said. ‘Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.’
I bolded that section about the “default issue” as it makes clear what was really being threatened. Not a Tea Party fantasy of living within our means and prioritizing our obligations, but a U.S. default.
UPDATE: Here’s McConnell making the implications for the future more explicit:
“What we have done, Larry, also is set a new template. In the future, any president, this one or another one, when they request us to raise the debt ceiling it will not be clean anymore. This is just the first step. This, we anticipate, will take us into 2013. Whoever the new president is, is probably going to be asking us to raise the debt ceiling again. Then we will go through the process again and see what we can continue to achieve in connection with these debt ceiling requests of presidents to get our financial house in order.”