Posted on 06/23/2011 7:40:40 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Cantor Pulls Out of Biden-Led Budget By JANET HOOK And COREY BOLES
WASHINGTON—House Majority Leader Eric Cantor Thursday said he was pulling out of the bipartisan budget talks headed by Vice President Joe Biden for now because the group has reached an impasse over taxes that only President Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) could resolve.
Mr. Cantor, in an interview after a negotiating session he described as bitterly contentious, said he would not be attending today's scheduled meeting of the bipartisan deficit-reduction leadership group because he believed it was time for the negotiations to move to a higher level.
"We've reached the point where the dynamic needs to change,'' Mr. Cantor said. "It is up to the president to come in and talk to the speaker. We've reached the end of this phase. Now is the time for these talks to go into abeyance."
Still, Mr. Cantor remained optimistic about the prospects for a deal. He said the Biden group had already made significant progress and had tentatively identified more than $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years. But he said there could be no agreement on an overall package without breaking the impasse between Republicans' refusal to accept any tax increase, and Democrats insistence that some tax hikes be part of the deal.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Trust but verify. I want to see what those so-called cuts are. I don’t consider this even a beginning until we have more information. Both parties have led us into the current predicament. I don’t trust any of them.
And that IS a good beginning. Dems obviously don't want that to happen because they can't then use it as an issue in election '12.
NOTE THIS: This is puzzling. You know for sure that Obama didn’t extend the Bush Tax Cuts for 2 years because he thought it would be bad for the country and he just wanted to make himself out a liar for criticizing the Bush Cuts as being just for the Rich. No......supported the extension because he realized it is best for the economy...if he had any hopes for re-election.
This discussion between Biden, Democrats and Republicans should take into account this reality as well. I think the political metric is that in view of the Bush Tax renewall, War in Iraw still, War in Afghanistan still, new war in Libya and many other steps that have irritated his base he is now figuring on the need to “shore up” his base and sort of damn the economy that he understood so well in December.
Why doesn’t he just do what is best for the economy (as he argued himself in December) and cut spending without destroying the value of the spending cut with a tax increase. One Step forward and One Step Backward leaves us in the same mess we are right now.
10 years?
Get frigging real.
Might as well be 100 years.
How 'bout two years. Something realistic.
These political jokes need to get their head out of the clouds.
Yeah, the Dems will support that. The budget talks have collapsed. The Dems want to raise taxes and keep spending. Let's see the specifics.
budget talks headed by Vice President Joe Biden ...????...is like he should lead a class on driver safety...this guy with the 18 million dollar web site couldn’t lead a Kindergarten
assault on a box of Milk Duds.
..you have to give them the money before they tell you how their gonna waste it
Why are taxes on the table in the first place? If Republicans get roped into a “grand bargain” with Obama’s bunch, they are already screwed. This is about spending cuts.
Dems want taxes raised, and frankly our tax code is excessively complex. Will these negotiations simplify the tax code? Doubtful.
If Republicans get roped into a “grand bargain” with Obama’s bunch, they are already screwed. This is about spending cuts.
Obama does need to sign any bill that gets implemented.
The broad outline of any deal has been known for at least 6 Months. With a few Republicans being impolitic enough to admit to it.
1. Someone pays more in taxes. Only detail I have seen has been producers of Ethanol for blending with gasoline losing their tax credits.
2. Some program ends. There have been a few proposals from republicans, but none that seem to even have the support of the GOP leadership.
3. the debt ceiling gets raised.
The details matter, and there is little to no agreement on the details where anyone is speaking publicly.
...which would help to explain why Cantor is resorting to the empty gesture of putting a BBA up for a vote. Sounds like they’re calculating that in 2012 they’ll not only win but pick up seats by default. But why bother?
If there is a $2 trillion deal of spending cuts, we need an immediate downpayment of $500 billion in FY 12 alone. This will change the baseline for every year beyond. The House GOP understands that the spending cut for FY 12 must be huge, and must be guaranteed.
Unfortunately, that SOB Bernanke gave the RATS their talking point yesterday by claiming that spending cuts in FY 12 would be neutral to negative for job creation. POS.
Here is the biggest concern: if there is no debt limit increase, BamBam is going to withhold social security checks beginning in August and blame the GOP. Anybody have a sense of how this could be preempted, and how it would play out?
Dunno, although I guess if the house could raise the debt limit for the amount required to pay the social security checks and authorize it, then perhaps the ball would be back in Barry’s court.
Yeah, the House would have to increase the debt limit by the amount needed to pay social security checks and include language stating that all additional borrowing has to be used only to pay for social security, and can’t be used to pay for the massively expensive, sprawling bureaucracies that fill the area inside the Washington beltway. So in other words the extra borrowing would have to be used to pay social security checks so that old folks aren’t going hungry, but can’t be used to pay $160K salaries for useless administrators employed in worthless activity at the Education Dept.
That will send the ball back into Obama’s court and he’d have to use the money for social security checks. If he didn’t use the funds for social security, then Boehner and McConnell and the entire GOP could destroy him rhetorically and possibly even being impeachment proceedings again Zero for high crimes against retired Americans. The MSM would have to cover an impeachment vote—that’s too big of an event even for those liars to ignore.
Boehner and McConnell should insist on no tax hikes in this debt negotiation. Agricultural subsidies and ethanol subsidies should be cut severely, because we can’t afford this kind of “central planning” any more. Every industry has to stand on its own and be able to run a positive cash flow without getting a cash subsidy from the taxpayers.
Higher tax rates would not increase federal tax revenues because they would have a dampening effect on economic growth. Economic growth is crucial for deficit reduction and it is the right way to increase tax revenue—by expanding the economy and corporate & personal incomes, which expands taxable income, puts more income up into higher tax brackets and increases tax revenue dramatically. Tax rates on ordinary personal income and corporate income are already TOO HIGH in America and need to be reduced with some offsetting elimination of tax deductions. It’s insane to increase tax rates as we’re struggling to emerge from the Great Recession. We need to cut back on federal subsidies, unnecessary federal consultants and defense contracts, and massively expensive federal bureaucracies, as well as entitlement spending. That’s the only way to cut the deficit substantially, because raising tax rates would cut our economic growth rate, thereby offsetting all revenue increase from higher tax rates and resulting in NO increase in federal tax revenue.
The argument for tax hikes does not make sense for “deficit reduction” - they would be used as a cover for more spending. The budget must be balanced through cuts alone. Tax hikes would be a more intellectually honest argument if the budget were balanced through cuts and the tax hikes were to start paying down and reducing the DEBT - not the deficit. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not advocating tax hikes - but that would be the only case where the argument for the same would actually be intellectually honest. Otherwise they would just be for funding more spending.
You must have read - “Deficit Reduction Secrets” by an Anonymous Politician
We’ll see, but beware of the House Republican “leadership,” which is an oxymoron.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.