Tim Pawlenty issued a statement yesterday praising House speaker John Boehner and Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Penn.) for advocating spending cuts:
While President Obama continues to offer America a false choice between more debt or default, I applaud Speaker Boehner’s comments yesterday. Speaker Boehner is right that we must offset any increase in the debt ceiling with trillions of dollars of real spending cuts. We also need a mechanism, such as a Balanced Budget Amendment or real spending caps to ensure that we never get into this debt mess again. Now is the time to say ‘enough’ and force Washington to make the hard choices to fix our budget mess.
We should also look to the budget proposed today by Senator Pat Toomey. This is a common-sense budget — the Federal government cannot continue to spend more money than it takes in. We can balance the budget in the next decade, but it requires the sort of smart choices and leadership being offered by Senator Toomey and several other Senate Republicans. I applaud him for having the courage to say no to more out-of-control deficits.