Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, up for re-election in 2012, has come under fire by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) for her inconsistent debt ceiling rhetoric.
“Missourians won’t soon forget that when Claire McCaskill talks about ‘these guys who all voted for the spending,’ she’s actually talking about herself and her rubber-stamp support for President Obama’s reckless spending agenda,” NRSC press secretary Chris Bond said in a statement. (McConnell re-extends invite to Obama for debt ceiling, Obama accepts)
McCaskill, a first-term Democrat, went on Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC Tuesday night and discussed her support for raising the debt ceiling now.
“The other thing [that] is frustrating about this, Chris, that I think they are trying to tell the American people [is] that when we raise the debt limit we’re asking for permission to spend more money. That’s not true,” McCaskill said on Hardball.
In September 2007, when the national debt was $9 trillion — it’s now $14.3 trillion — McCaskill publicly refused to vote for increase of the debt ceiling. “I couldn’t bring myself to vote for this,” McCaskill told the Kansas City Star then. “President Bush and the previous Republican Congress have taken the surpluses from the Clinton administration and turned our budget to an unacceptable color of bright red. I am comforted by new pay-as-you-go rules that we put in place in January which will result in a surplus by 2012.”
Bond said McCaskill’s debt ceiling change of heart raises questions as to what she really thinks about budget negotiations. Her “hollow rhetoric and blatant flip-flopping on the debt ceiling debate is so transparent that Republicans can only hope she gives similar interviews every day to MSNBC, from now until Election Day next year,” said Bond.