Senate

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on Tuesday said he intends to prevail in the GOP primary and general election next year in order to become chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee on which he is currently serving as ranking member. 

"I don't know what he's going to do," Hatch said referring to his likely rival for the GOP nomination Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). "He's got every right to do whatever he wants to and we'll meet that challenge." 

Congress and the president will enact cuts to the Pentagon and defense spending “over my dead body,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Tuesday.

“With threats in Iran and Yemen materializing, now is not time to weaken the strongest military in the world,” Graham said, referring to allowing defense cuts.

“[T]he number one priority is a strong national defense,” Graham continued. “Economic [concerns have] overtaken the defense side. I’m very upset with my party for allowing the military to be subjected to cuts. ... our leadership party has drifted away from [the concept of] peace through strength.”

Sen. Mike Crapo, (R-Idaho) on Tuesday said if Congress had followed the Gang of Six's recommendation to cut the deficit by $3.7 trillion, the U.S.'s AAA status would still be intact.

"I'm absolutely certain that if our proposal had been accepted the downgrade [of the nation's credit rating] would not have happened," Crapo said, according to the Rexburg Standard Journal.

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) on Monday attacked Standards & Poor’s decision to downgrade the U.S. economy from its AAA status, and questioned the rating agency’s credibility. 

"I think because of the mistakes they made, they had their numbers off by $2 trillion," said Udall, citing an error S&P made in calculating the U.S.'s credit score. 

Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) ran into a boisterous crowd at a town-hall meeting Monday night in Lincoln, Neb.

The Lincoln Journal Star reported that “emotions ran over” in the meeting, which “sharply veered away from the typical calm of a Johanns town hall.”

For example, Johanns’s suggestion that the Tea Party had “been helpful” rather than harmful during the debt-ceiling debate provoked objections.

At other points, attendees loudly exclaimed their positions on various issues. 

“The wealthy just hoard the cash,” one crowd member said. 

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was confronted Monday at a town hall meeting over comments he made from the Senate floor last month in which he used the term “Tea Party hobbits.”

“What apology is in order?” McCain responded when asked if he would apologize for the remark, as reported by the East Valley Tribune. “What was wrong that I said?”

In his floor speech on June 28, McCain read from a Wall Street Journal editorial that drew a parallel between some Tea Party members and characters in the epic “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) said over the weekend that members of the Tea Party are willing to do "extraordinarily bad things" for the country and that they don't even "care about it."

"They have no shame, and that's an interesting concept because I've never really been up against that before," said Rockefeller, speaking of the conservative grassroots movement. "People who will do absolutely extraordinarily bad things that are extraordinarily bad for the country and not care about it." 

Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) on Monday asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and a key administration healthcare official to reply to questions that he and other senators asked back in May, but have gone unanswered.

Johanns's letter to Geithner and Richard Foster, the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, noted that the senators asked for a reply within two weeks, and that 81 days have elapsed without a reply.

"As a former member of the President's Cabinet, I can assure you that a letter from 37 Senators with a specified deadline would have been prioritized for response," Johanns wrote. "The time period that has lapsed is unacceptable." Johanns was secretary of Agriculture under former President George W. Bush.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Monday joined colleagues in blasting the coming "supercommittee" that is charged with slashing $1.5 trillion from the federal deficit before the Thanksgiving break.

"Congress has created a special committee that short-circuits debate and avoids real accountability," said Johnson in a statement regarding the new Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, called for by the recent deal to raise the federal debt ceiling. “[C]onducting back room negotiations at the very last minute is no way to decide the fiscal future of America."

Leaders have until early next week to name the 12 members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.