WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor today regarding the need for the President to skip the campaign trail and participate in bipartisan fiscal negotiations to prevent the country from going over the Fiscal Cliff:

“Yesterday, I came to the floor to discuss what is known as the Fiscal Cliff — a mix of automatic tax hikes and defense cuts that are set to hit at the end of the year, jeopardizing our security and our economy.

“My message was simple: A solution is possible, Republicans have been reasonable, and the President needs to lead. He’s the only one who can get us to a solution. If that’s what he wants, we’ll succeed.

“So it was with some concern that I read this morning that the President plans to hit the road this week to drum up support for his own personal approach to the short and long-term fiscal challenges we face.  In other words, rather than sitting down with lawmakers of both parties and working out an agreement, he’s back out on the campaign trail, presumably with the same old talking points we’re all familiar with.

“Look: we already know the President is a very good campaigner. What we don’t know is whether he has the leadership qualities necessary to lead his party to a bipartisan agreement on a big issue likes this.

“So let me suggest that if the President wants a solution to the challenges of the moment, the people he needs to be talking to are the members of his own party, so he can convince them of the need to act.

“We’re not going to solve this problem by creating villains and drumming up outrage. We’ll solve this problem by doing the hard work of sitting down and figuring out a solution that involves tough choices on all sides. Which gets at another point I made yesterday.

“In the past, Democrats have demanded tax hikes now for spending cuts that never happened. Not this time. A balanced approach means real cuts, now.  I’m not saying this because it’s the Republicans position, though it is. I’m not saying it because I have anything against the government, which I don’t. I’m saying it because it’s the only approach that will work.

“No credible deficit reduction plan we’ve seen over the past few years excludes real cuts. And if we want to prevent this crisis, Democrats need to be as serious about cuts as they are about spending. It’s that simple.

“By the way, this is also an approach Americans overwhelmingly support. According to a recent AP poll, voters prefer spending cuts to tax hikes 62 to 29 percent; a more than two-to-one margin. There’s a reason for this. The American people aren’t stupid. They know the problem with Washington isn’t that it taxes too little, but that it spends too much. They also know the only reason we’re even talking about a looming fiscal crisis right now is because Democrats spent the last four years creating it.

“And that’s what I’d like to focus on this morning: how we got into this mess in the first place. Because amid all the talk about plans and proposals, it’s easy to forget that we didn’t get here by accident. We got here because Washington Democrats — from the President on down — have done two things exceedingly well over the past four years: spent other peoples’ money, and kicked cans down the road.

“For four years, Democrats spent money we didn’t have in the misguided hope it would help the economy. They borrowed trillions of dollars to keep unemployment pretty much right where it was when they started, and here’s what we have four years later: a mountain of debt, and a looming national budgetary crisis.

“So Republicans are happy to talk about how to solve this mess, but make no mistake: we’ll also talk about how we got here. The reason we’re having these negotiations is because Washington Democrats have spent money without any care for the cost or the future, and refused to do anything to protect long-term spending programs like Medicare, a failure that’s among the biggest single drivers of our debt.

“All this reflects a philosophy. For Washington Democrats, every dollar that’s ever been secured for anything is sacred. And they’ll defend it to the death, regardless of what it means for jobs or the economy. But those days are over. Because you don’t eliminate trillion dollar deficits by taxing the rich — not even close. It may be an effective talking point, but as a matter of policy it’s minor. And Democrats know it.

“So as we move into the final stretch, it’s time, as I’ve said, to put the talking points away and get real. The first step to recovery is to admit you’ve got a problem. And if borrowing more than 40 cents for every dollar you spend doesn’t convince you you’ve got a spending problem, frankly, I don’t know what will.

“If Democrats can’t admit that we’ve got a spending problem, they need to talk to their constituents more. They need to get real, and that means changing the way things have been done around here over the past few years. Independent budget experts have been telling us for ages that our long-term budget deficits are driven by unsustainable health care entitlements. What was the Administration’s response?  Their response was to add trillions more by creating an entirely new health care entitlement program.

“We were promised that the President’s health care law would reduce health care costs. What did it do? We’re now told health care costs will rise as a share of our economy and the taxpayers’ liability.

“By one estimate, those costs will go up by more than half a trillion dollars over the next ten years.

“We know that the number of Americans 65 or older will increase by one-third over the next 10 years. According to the Census Bureau, there were 40 million older Americans in 2010. There will be 54 million of them a decade after that, and more than 72 million older Americans a decade after that. What are Democrats doing to ensure that the programs they rely upon will be there for these Americans?

“We can’t ignore the facts.  We need to prepare for the demographic changes we know are coming.  Medicare is simply too important for millions of seniors to let it continue down the road to insolvency.  We must preserve it for today’s seniors and strengthen it for those who will retire in the years ahead.

“And as Congress looks for savings, we need to look at the new health care entitlements too. While Democrats and Republicans may disagree on Obamacare — it’s ridiculous to suggest that we make changes to Medicare and Medicaid, while leaving $1.6 trillion in new Obamacare spending untouched.

“For four years, Democrats have been completely unbalanced in the way they’ve spent taxpayer dollars. Yet now that the crisis is upon us, they solemnly advise us that we need to be balanced in our solution.

“This is how you ensure the expansion of government. This is how you end up with a $16 trillion debt. But it’s not how you get out of it. It’s not how you solve the problem. You solve the problem by taking tough medicine, and tough votes. You solve it by doing something different than what you’ve been doing. You solve it with the help of a President who’s willing to lead his party.

“You don’t just change your rhetoric and your talking points while telling your base behind closed doors you aren’t going to give any ground. You change your behavior. And for Democrats in Washington, as I’ve said, that means getting serious for a change about cuts. The time for campaigning is over. It’s time to act.”