Republicans and Democrats agreed to increase the debt ceiling for three months at the end of January, but with another deadline approaching in May, the top Senate Republican is hinting that the GOP will again demand spending cuts in exchange for any increase.

That is par for the course for Republicans, who have repeatedly threatened to let the nation default on its obligations if President Obama and Senate Democrats don’t agree to cut spending, but this time, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said the GOP will likely demand cuts to America’s entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security — to agree to an increase in the borrowing limit, The Hill reports:

“Until we make our entitlement programs fit the demographics of our country, you can’t save America, you can’t save the healthcare system,” McConnell said. “There is no revenue solution, I would say to you.”

“We all anticipate that the president’s request of us to raise the debt ceiling, which we’ll probably do sometime this will generate another, hopefully, another discussion about solving the real problem,” he said.

Republicans continue to crow about entitlement reform, ignoring that Social Security is fully solvent for at least two decades, that Obama extended Medicare’s solvency by nine years as part of his sweeping healthcare law, and that at least one of the major reforms Republicans favor — raising the retirement age for Medicare enrollees — would do nothing to improve the program’s health. Meanwhile, the GOP refuses to actually put forth specific entitlement reform plans that would do anything other than end the programs as they exist today.

Using the debt ceiling to extract such cuts is an even less reasonable position, given the pain the GOP’s debt intransigence has already inflicted on the economy. The 2011 debt fight led to increased borrowing costs, hampered job growth for months, and created the automatic budget cuts that went into effect at the beginning of March — all of which burdened an economy that is still struggling to fully recover from the Great Recession. That brinksmanship has led leading policymakers like Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, as well as a vast majority of economists, to call for the abolition of the statutory debt limit.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reiterated Sunday that the automatic budget cuts that began taking effect March 1 were “modest” cuts that would keep the United States from turning into the Western European countries that have spent the last four years battling high unemployment and repeat recessions.

“We have a $16 trillion national debt,” McConnell said. “Our debt is as big as our economy. That alone makes us look like a Western European country.”

European unemployment hit a new record last week, and the Eurozone re-entered recession in November. Spain and Greece both have unemployment rates above 25 percent, and even Germany, the continent’s stalwart economy, is now contracting. Those struggles have largely occurred because Europe has attempted to reduce debt and deficit levels too quickly instead of focusing on growing the economy.

The United States took a different path after the Great Recession, choosing stimulus instead, and it has so far fared better than Europe. But it is now pursuing the same austere path Europe chose, with sequestration’s automatic budget cuts threatening to damage the recovery the U.S. has already made. McConnell claimed that “spending has exploded,” but while government spending has helped lead past economic recoveries, it has plateaued in the last four years and largely failed to help this recovery.

The cuts McConnell called “modest” will likely only make that worse. The Congressional Budget Office projects that it will lead to reduced economic growth and 750,000 lost jobs, and other projections show that it may hinder growth enough to prevent actual deficit reduction. But when Crowley asked McConnell to address those projections, he refused, saying only, “We promised the American people we’d do this a year and a half ago.”

Allowing sequestration to occur on March 1 will have a devastating impact on states, the White House warned Sunday, when it released state-specific reports detailing the effects of the automatic budget cuts. States will lose funding for education, job training, health care, and a plethora of other services, jeopardizing assistance for low-income and middle class families alike and threatening the economic recovery.

ThinkProgress examined the implications of the budget cuts on the five states represented by Republican leadership in the House and Senate. Those five states would lose a collective $206 million in education funding, jeopardizing nearly 3,000 teaching jobs and allowing them to serve 428,000 fewer students. While the impacts are particularly large for California and Texas, they would be felt across all five states, according to the White House fact sheets:

OHIO: House Speaker John Boehner’s state will lose $25.1 million in education funding, putting 350 teaching jobs at risk and allowing it to serve 34,000 fewer students and 100 fewer schools. 2,500 children will lose Head Start funding, 3,320 will lose assistance to help pay for college, and as many as 800 will lose access to child care. The loss of $1.7 million in job training and assistance funds will mean 57,000 fewer Ohioans get help from those programs. Ohio will also lose $823,000 in funding to help provide meals to seniors.

KENTUCKY: Sequestration will cost Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s home state $11.8 million in education funding, meaning it could lose 160 teaching jobs and serve 21,000 fewer students. More than 1,700 low-income students will lose assistance to help pay for college, and 1,100 will lose access to Head Start. More than 16,000 Kentuckians will lose job training and placement assistance when the state loses $478,000 in funding for those programs, and it will also receive $677,000 less to help provide meals to seniors.

VIRGINIA: Virginia, the home of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, would lose $14 million in education funding, jeopardizing 190 teaching jobs and cutting funding for 40 schools and 14,000 students. 1,000 students would lose access to Head Start and 2,120 low-income students would lose funding to help finance college. Another 400 low-income children could lose access to child care assistance. The state will lose $348,000 in job search and placement assistance, allowing it to serve 18,390 fewer people. It will also lose $1.2 million in funding to help provide meals to seniors.

TEXAS: The home of Senate GOP Whip John Cornyn would lose $67.8 million in education funding, putting 930 teaching jobs at risk and cutting funding for 280 schools and 172,000 students. Another 4,800 students would lose access to Head Start and 2,300 would lose access to child care assistance. Texas would lose more than $2 million in funds for job search and placement assistance, meaning more than 83,000 people would lose assistance. Texas will also lose $3.5 million in funding to help provide meals to seniors.

CALIFORNIA: House GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy’s home state would lose $87.6 million in education funding, jeopardizing 1,210 teaching jobs and affecting funding for 320 schools and 187,000 students. More than 8,000 students would lose funding for Head Start, and 9,600 low-income students would lose funding to help pay for college. Another 2,000 families will lose child care assistance, while the loss of $3.3 million in funding for job search and placement assistance, affecting nearly 130,000 people. The state will also lose $5.4 million in funding to help provide meals to seniors.