Eric Cantor: Vote On Debt Ceiling Must Be Tied To Spending Cuts
Yesterday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said that House Republicans will not support an increase in the debt ceiling unless it is tied to spending cuts:
U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor said on Sunday his fellow Republicans would not vote to increase the U.S. debt limit unless it was coupled with spending cuts and reforms.
“Republicans are not going to vote for this increase in the debt limit unless there are serious spending cuts and reforms,” Cantor said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program. “That is just the way it is.”
“So we have talked about bringing spending levels down to ’08 levels,” Cantor said, referring to the 2008 federal budget. “We know there are hundreds of programs that are going to need to be cut.”
The question is whether the Senate will go along, and what the House GOP will do if they don’t.
After he helped push through the tax cut deal, which made the deficit much, much worse?
Brass ones….
Obviously he is trying to stake out a strong position with the hopes of extracting some concessions. Its a weak hand though, because the ceiling must be raised. He is about to find out how popular individual spending programs are, despite the fact that spending in general is not popular.Look for him to leave some exit doors in his positions…
“Brass ones…”
And we ain’t even got to “restoring the cuts to Medicare” …
My guess is these guys will huff and puff and do enough cutting to allow them to go into the 2012 elections saying, “See, we blah blah blah,” i.e., “repealing Obamacare” redux. They won’t go anywhere near the real money, Medicare. Social Security isn’t the real money at all since its fixes are minor compared to those needed for Medicare.
Come on, it’s a gimmie.
Both parties only want to find some BS cuts to act as fig leaf.
>>>The question is<<<
what cuts are they going to propose and are they going to propse them on tape? (you know, so the dems have plenty of political ad fodder (almost said, "ammo") for 2012???)