Kentucky Tea Party Calls for McConnell's 'Immediate' Resignation

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should immediately resign for violating his oath of office by agreeing to end the government shutdown, his home state tea party group said Friday.

McConnell "swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States," United Kentucky Tea Party spokesman Scott Hofstra said in a press release Friday morning. "He has violated that oath by abdicating Congressional control of the authority to borrow money on behalf of the citizens of the United States."

McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, is in the midst of a heated battle with Kentucky businessman Matt Bevin for the 2014 Republican nomination for the Senate seat he has held since 1985.

Conservative groups across Kentucky and the United States are backing Bevin in the race, and McConnell gave an interview with The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, Friday  in which he complained about tea party groups that are targeting Republican candidates such as him.

Friday's call for McConnell to step down didn't mention the Noonan interview, but instead McConnell's role in the government shutdown and the nation's debt ceiling.

"McConnell has been trying since 2011 to pass a rule that would allow Obama to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling at will, without the interference of the Congress," said the UKTP press release. "McConnell finds that debt ceiling fights are unpleasant affairs that require him to show courage and leadership, two attributes he lacks."

But instead of requiring the president to come to Congress for approval to raise the debt ceiling, McConnell's change violates the Constitution by granting "the president unconstitutional authority to borrow unilaterally and furthermore, grants the President authority to veto a Congressional vote against raising the debt ceiling," the release stated.

The UKTP contended that if President Barack Obama issues the veto, "Congress will be required to raise a two-thirds super-majority in both houses to override said veto, and failing to do so, the President will automatically and unilaterally get his debt ceiling increase, thereby bypassing the requirement of the Constitution that Congress shall be the institution to borrow against the United States accounts."

Further, the UKTP complained, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York is pushing to make McConnell's rule permanent, "guaranteeing that President Obama never again has to go to Congress to get approval to raise the debt ceiling and sink this country even further into debt."

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