Our guest blogger is Elon Green, a freelance writer living in Brooklyn.
A week and half ago, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) — along with his colleague, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — broke ranks and admitted that using the country’s debt ceiling as a bargaining chip to force massive spending cuts might have been a bad idea. “Maybe the debt ceiling was the wrong place to pick a fight, as it related to trying to get our country’s house in order,” Corker said. “Maybe that was the wrong place to do it.”
Corker appears to have changed his mind. In an appearance today on MSNBC, he backtracked:
MITCHELL: I think I’m hearing something from you, though, that suggests — and so please tell me if I’m wrong here — that as long as you all are talking about real deficit reduction, which you’ve been talking about for quite some time and you have a lot of relationships across party lines, that you think perhaps the House Republicans should separate out the debt ceiling and deal with that as a separate issue or come up with some way to finesse this?
CORKER: No. No, I think, Andrea, that, you know, there’s been a lot of debate about whether or not the debt ceiling should have been used for this debate or not. I think that it was the right place and rhetorically have asked questions on the Senate floor if it wasn’t for the debt ceiling what are we going to use to make us actually address this issue.
Watch it:
Corker’s lack of consistency isn’t a surprise. After all, he was pro-choice until it became politically inconvenient — and, not so long ago, he happily voted to raise the debt ceiling.
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