Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Susan Bysiewicz continues to court the party's left flank.
This afternoon, she put out a press release urging Congressional Democrats not to sacrifice "progressive priorities" in the debate over the federal debt.
"It is time to stand and fight, not to sacrifice our shared progressive priorities to the Tea Party who are bent on destroying everything we have worked for," Bysiewicz said in the release. "We must stand firm to safeguard our investments in health care, the economy and infrastructure while we protect Medicare and Social Security for the long-term. Middle class families should not have to shoulder the entire burden of the deficit. We can increase the debt limit and cut spending but we must not do it on the backs on middle class families."
Bysiewicz says the best way to reduce the deficit is to end the war in Afghanistan immediately. She also calls for an end to subsidies to big oil.
U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, one of Bysiewicz' Democratic opponents in the Senate race, made headlines last year when he announced that he could not support any federal budget that does not cut all non-entitlement spending by at least 1 percent.
"The government's got to start trimming spending just as families across the district are cutting their own budgets,'' Murphy said in a conference call with reporters last year.