“I don’t know what to apologize for … What I said was true, that it’s unrealistic and unfair to the American people to tell them that we’d have to pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution before we would act [to raise the debt ceiling]. If anyone misunderstood that then of course I would apologize that they misunderstood it, but it’s not my fault it was misunderstood.”
– Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., talking to a voter at a town hall who asked him to apologize for comments he made on the Senate floor about the Tea Party’s influence on the debt ceiling negotiations — namely the idea of linking any deal to raise the debt ceiling with the passage of a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution — which McCain called “foolish” and “bizarro.”
