Retiring Arizona Senator - and GOP Minority Whip - Jon Kyl is holding true to his word (in news conference announcing plans to not run for re-election) and is urging his colleagues to not be too extreme in their federal deficit-cutting plans.
"If we try to be too strong here about how we try to reduce spending, we are not going to be successful because people just won't stand for it," said Kyl on the Senate floor Friday night as the last-minute deal to avert a federal government shutdown was minutes away from being announced.
Kyl advocated for three measures for Congress to pursue: a balanced budget amendment, a constitutional spending limit ("a very, very good idea"), and a bipartisan (Corker-McCaskill) effort to cap mandatory and discretionary spending ("create a glide path by which we could gradually reduce the spending so you don't have to do it all at once").
Kyl compared the need to slim down the budget and the deficit to a diet, saying you do not gain all your weight at once and you cannot get rid of it all at once.
Here is the entire 16-minute presentation he gave - a pretty good summation. (If you want to see a good summation of a representative Democratic viewpoint, keep watching after Kyl for Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO).)
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