Brown: GOP Cuts Are "Irresponsible"

Politico reports:

While some Senate Republicans are tacking right on the budget, Sen. Scott Brown is attacking proposed cuts coming from members of his own party as “irresponsible” and urging both sides of the aisle to come together on a bipartisan deal.

In a strong>Thursday floor speech< and in a letter to Senate leaders from both parties, the moderate Massachusetts Republican expressed frustration about the apparent inability of members of Congress and the White House to reach a deal to fund the government for the rest of fiscal 2011.

“Sadly, rather than reaching a workable, bipartisan solution to responsibly address our staggering deficit … our leaders have repeatedly given us a false choice between CR proposals that either don’t go far enough to reduce federal spending and proposals that establish the wrong priorities that would disproportionately affect low-income families and seniors,” he said in his floor speech, strong>and repeated in his letter<.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), one of the recipients of the letter, took to the Senate floor on Thursday morning strong>to voice his support for the tea party movement< and its position advocating cuts in federal spending, including on social and cultural programs that make up a small sliver of the budget.

“[T]hanks to ordinary Americans like these speaking their minds and advocating for common sense reforms, I’m increasingly confident we’ll get our fiscal house in order,” McConnell said of the tea party movement. “Republicans are determined to do our part.”

Republicans have rolled out ideological spending cuts on social programs like NPR and Planned Parenthood. In a statement last week, Brown (along with a handful of others) strong>broke from the GOP pack< to denounce the proposed defunding of Planned Parenthood, saying it “goes too far.”