McConnell invites president to the Capitol

Who really thinks that the answer to a $1.6 trillion deficit is a second stimulus, that the answer is more deficit spending? Where in the world did that idea come from?

That’s what the president was trying to defend yesterday.

The president needs to get serious. He himself said yesterday that reducing the deficit grows the economy.

His own Small Business Administration has told him not to enact one of the tax hikes he’s now proposing on job creators because, quote, “they could force many small businesses to close.” Fourteen million people out of work and he wants to take an action that could force small businesses across the country to close? That’s his vision of ‘shared sacrifice?’

I think the American worker has sacrificed enough. Besides, all of us know that Congress isn’t going to approve hundreds of billions of dollars in tax hikes — it’s not going to happen. We’ve known that for six months – and we’ve been saying it all along. These are tax hikes that couldn’t pass last year when the Democrats ran this town.

The president doesn’t seem to get it. So let me do something that I think would be constructive.

I’d like to invite the president to come to the Capitol today to join Republicans for lunch, or at any time this afternoon that he can make it. That way he can hear directly from Republicans why what he’s proposing won’t pass. And we can start talking about what’s actually possible.

The president says he wants us to get working. I can’t think of a better way than to have him come over and hear directly from our conference about the legislative realities in the Congress right now.