Sen. Jim DeMint, a favorite of Tea Party-leaning Republicans, doesn’t mince words with President Barack Obama for politicizing the debt-ceiling debate.
“When the president brought taxes back into this debt limit debate right at the end, it told me what I suspected all along — that he was never serious, never negotiating in good faith,” DeMint said in an exclusive interview with TheDC’s Ginni Thomas.
“What he did is he brought in these poll-tested tax ideas right at the last minute to make Republicans look unreasonable,” he continued. “The fact is the amount of revenue that they would create is very small. It would not contribute to the solution in any way.”
Predictably, the Senate voted down the House-approved Cut, Cap, Balance Act Friday in a 51–46 vote along party lines.
“Joint Taxes [the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation] has estimated the loss of thousands of jobs which will probably more than offset any revenue that we would get. So it’s not an attempt to help with the problem. it’s an attempt to just be political.”
Look for the full interview Monday at The Daily Caller.
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This story has been updated in light of the Senate’s vote on Cut, Cap and Balance. The original story is below.
South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, a favorite of Tea Party-leaning Republicans, is urging wary Senate Democrats to seriously consider supporting the House-approved Cut, Cap, Balance Act as a conclusion to the nation’s debt ceiling debate.
“I hope that Senate Democrats will realize — if they want to solve this problem before Aug. 2, there’s only one plan on the table that will do that,” DeMint said in an interview with TheDC’s Ginni Thomas. “If they vote it down, we’re out of time.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat, has scheduled a “motion to table” vote on Friday for the Cut, Cap, Balance Act. If 51 senators vote for the motion, the bill will be scrapped — something Reid clearly wants. DeMint warns strongly against choosing that course.
“The president gives us a lot of words,” DeMint said. “But there’s not one proposal from the president, there’s not one proposal from Democrats, and Republicans have unfortunately been over here negotiating with ourselves.”
“But now we have a position,” DeMint added, “and I hope Republicans will stick with it.”
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