On the recordJuly 22, 2011
I want to say to my friend from West Virginia, he has been a great addition to the Senate. We of course know he replaced the great, the legendary Robert Byrd. The people of West Virginia should be very happy with the performance of Joe Manchin and his executive experience as the Governor of the State of West Virginia, which had an impeccable record with surpluses every year he was there. He has brought this talent to Washington, and it has been very helpful to us all. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader. Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, 5 months ago, President Obama unveiled the only concrete statement he has made to date on our Nation's budget crisis, a 10-year budget plan so preposterous, so unequal to the moment that it was rejected in the Senate by a vote of 97-0. The President's response to this crisis was to pretend it didn't exist. Two months later, the President doubled down on his vision for a future of debt by demanding that Congress raise the debt limit, without any cuts to spending or a plan to rein it in. It was a total abdication of leadership and it wasn't sustainable. So over the past several weeks, the President has been doing his best impersonation of a fiscal moderate. He has talked about balance and left it to others to fill in the blanks. Here is what Democrats in Congress have proposed as a solution: more spending and higher taxes to a debt crisis.…





