(Image Source: U.S. Senate)

BY MEGAN NOE

ANCHOR CHRISTINA HARTMAN
 

You're watching multisource politics video news analysis from Newsy. 

In the debt ceiling debates, one man and his plan are under heat from Democrats and Republicans alike. Here’s just some of the headlines:

From Redstate -- “Mitch McConnell’s Pontius Pilate Act”
From Politico quoting a Democratic senator: -- “McConnell ‘lost his mind’”
From Vision To America -- “Is Mitch McConnell Crazy?”
And from RealClearPolitics -- ”Mitch McConnell’s Brilliant Maneuver”

Whether the Senate Minority Leader becomes the villain or the hero of these debt debates, one thing is certain -- he’s attracting a firestorm of controversy. Bloomberg lays out the newest version of the senator’s infamous “Plan B.”

“It would allow the President to get a 2.5 trillion dollar increase in the debt ceiling but without a single Republican vote. The intent there, to deflect political fallout onto the Democrats. To try and woo skeptical House Republicans, the package would include as much as 1.5 trillion in short-term spending cuts, and it would enpanel yet another deficit commission, this one made up of 12 lawmakers to come up with a long-term deficit-reduction plan by the end of the year.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has jumped on board with Plan B, but not all Democrats are as satisfied. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Senator Claire McCaskill calls the move -- “brazenly political.”

SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D-MO): “I think Mitch McConnell, frankly, has lost his mind... This is when we’re supposed to come together and show the country that we are capable of governing. Not when we’re supposed to be figuring out ‘What is the best strategy for me to become Majority Floor Leader.’”

And Republican Senator Tom Coburn from Oklahoma tells CBS’ Face the Nation -- the plan fails for another reason-- it simply pushes the problem down the road.

SEN. TOM COBURN (R-OK): “I think the McConnell plan is more of Washington not taking responsibility. It’s a great political plan, it takes the pressure off all the politicians, but allows us to pass a debt limit without making the hard choices that this country has to make.”

Other members of McConnell’s own party have turned on him as well. House Republicans say it gives away their leverage, and Ohio representative Jim Jordan tells Fox News Sunday, the GOP won’t go for it.

“Look, the McConnell plan doesn't have 218 Republican votes.... Who knows if there's a combination of R's and D's who will go for it. But I'm telling you, House conservative members, members of the Republican Senate, they're not going to support the McConnell plan. I'm not going to support the McConnell plan.”

But with just days to go until the White House’s July 22 deadline, The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein says McConnell may have the only answer.

“For Republicans, this plan is something close to the best of all possible worlds (sorry, but I do not consider a world in which ‘Cut, Cap, and Balance’ passes to be a possible one): It's all spending cuts and no revenues.... As for the Democrats? Well, it's a deal. No particular part of it is so [objectionable] that Harry Reid couldn't pass it if he tried. And it raises the debt ceiling.”

House Republicans will vote Tuesday on their Cut, Cap, and Balance Plan. McConnell’s Plan B could hit the Senate floor by Wednesday.

Transcript by Newsy.