McConnell to Obama: Americans don’t want your advice on fiscal responsibility

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday tore into President Obama's Wednesday speech on deficit reduction, saying the public doesn’t want advice from him on fiscal prudence.

"The American people are not inclined to take advice on fiscal responsibility from an administration whose unprecedented borrowing and spending has done so much to create the mess we are in," said McConnell.

McConnell accused Obama of shifting from wanting to spend more to wanting to save more only because it’s politically expedient.

“After two years of adding trillions to the debt and ignoring our nation's looming fiscal nightmare, the president may be right in thinking that the politically expedient thing to do is to point the finger at others, but the truly responsible thing would be to admit that his own two-year experiment in big government has been an unmitigated disaster for the economy and itself a major, major driver of our debt,” said McConnell

McConnell also had harsh words for the president’s plan to raise revenue by raising taxes on the wealthy.

“We cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society,” Obama said Wednesday in his speech. “We can’t afford it. And I refuse to renew them again.”

But McConnell said it was government spending, not low revenue, at the root of the problem.

"Americans know we face a fiscal crisis not because we tax too little, but because we spend too much," said McConnell, repeating a mantra often employed by congressional Republicans this year.