Senate Republican Leader Says There Will Be No More Shutdowns

The day after Congress voted to end the government shutdown, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared there would be no repeat of the shutdown that he didn't want in the first place. 

"A government shutdown is off the table," McConnell told The National Review. "We’re not going to do it." In raising the debt limit and opening the government on Wednesday night, Congress set Dec. 13 as the deadline for Democrats and Republicans to come to a budget agreement. Government funding runs out Jan. 15. But those deadlines won't bring another crisis, he said. 

McConnell didn't mention Sen. Ted Cruz, who led the shutdown-the-government-to-defund-Obamacare fight. In fact, when National Review's Robert Costa asked about Cruz, McConnell "had no comment--at all. Stone-faced." But McConnell's comments are pretty clear criticism of Cruz's actions. "I think we have fully now acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is," McConnell told The Hill. (Cruz was elected last year.) McConnell said:

"One of my favorite old Kentucky sayings is there’s no education in the second kick of a mule. The first kick of a mule was when we shut the government down in the mid 1990s and the second kick was over the last 16 days... There is no education in the second kick of a mule. There will not be a government shutdown."

Read more on The Atlantic Wire.