Mitch McConnell appeared on three major networks Sunday morning. But the Senate Minority Leader had just one message to deliver: We’re done with tax increases.

As you probably know, the bipartisan agreement on taxes that President Obama signed last week will push tax rates on some high incomes back to what they were during the Clinton era. Republicans aren’t happy about that, or any of the other tax increases in the new law. At least two more fiscal policy debates are about to take place—one over whether to increase the government’s borrowing capacity, known as the “debt ceiling,” and one over whether to replace or postpone a set of automatic spending cuts, known as the "sequester." However those debates are settled, separately or together, McConnell and his colleagues are making clear they believe that more tax increases should not be part of the conversation. “We’ve resolved the tax issue,” McConnell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” echoing words he’d used in a Yahoo! News op-ed several days before. “It’s behind us.” Going forward, McConnell said, deficit reduction must take place through spending cuts exclusively. “We don’t have this problem because we tax too little. We have it because we spend way too much.”

Americans have heard this argument before. But they might be more inclined to believe it now, for precisely the reason that McConnell cites: Last week’s legislation raises taxes. Isn’t that enough? Isn’t it time to go back to spending cuts?

Hardly. For one thing, last week’s agreement, known as the “Taxpayer Relief Act,” was not the only deficit reduction legislation that Obama and the Republicans have enacted. Rather, it’s the latest in a series of measures. Most notable among the past efforts was the 2011 “Budget Control Act,” which Obama signed after Republicans first threatened to hold up the debt ceiling increase. Those past measures, which were all spending cuts and no tax increases, reduced the deficit by $1.5 trillion. The Taxpayer Relief Act, which is all tax increases and (almost) no spending cuts, reduces the deficit by less than half that amount. So even taking into account last week’s agreement, deficit reduction has meant more spending cuts than tax increases.

And it will continue to be so. During that same “Meet the Press” interview, McConnell said Obama “doesn’t embrace the effort to reduce spending.” That's just not true. The original proposal he made to House Speaker John Boehner, shortly after the election, included hundreds of billions of dollars in proposed spending reductions, including cuts to discretionary spending (which is already at historic lows) and to Medicare. The Medicare cuts were all on the provider side—that is, they would have reduced what the program pays hospitals, drug makers, and other suppliers of care, but without directly reducing benefits. But in a subsequent proposal, one Boehner ultimately rejected, Obama said he would even agree to a reduction in Social Security benefits. In this next round of fiscal policy making, Obama has said he wants more revenue; most likely, he will return to some of the ideas that didn't make it into last week's deal. But Obama hasn't said he wants an all-taxes approach. On the contrary, he has also said he wants more spending cuts, too.