The speech rather quickly dovetailed into an attack on earmarks. “I’m aware that earmarks consume a very small proportion of the budget,” McCain said. The reason to focus on them is that they’re “deeply, deeply offensive” to Americans who are tightening their belts.

McCain also argued that the GOP wasn’t a “party of no,” (they had proposed smaller, tax-cut focused stimuli) and he ruled out any attempt to to use the budget reconciliation process to pass health care, education, or environmental reform. Doing that would debase “the normal 60 vote requirement that makes the Senate the unique environment that it is.”