Free Republic

House Republicans are poised to take on the Obama administration’s “job-destroying regulations” when Congress reconvenes shortly after Labor Day. In a memo to GOP members on Monday morning, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor outlined what he and other Republican leaders consider the “top 10 most harmful” Obama administration regulations. Citing recommendations from committee chairmen, Cantor called for the repeal of those regulations and offered a “selective calendar” timeframe for doing so. “These regulations are reflective of the types of costly bureaucratic handcuffs that Washington has imposed upon business people who want to create jobs,” Cantor wrote to his caucus. [...

Whatever the rhetoric that preceded this week's deal, the debt-ceiling debate was never really about the debt at all. It was about the terms on which the debate would continue. The "two different worldviews" that divide Washington, explains Eric Cantor, are too far apart for anything more than an armistice. The "philosophical starting point" of today's Democrats, as Mr. Cantor sees it, is that they "believe in a welfare state before they believe in capitalism. They promote economic programs of redistribution to close the gap of the disparity between the classes. That's what they're about: redistributive politics." The roots of...

Liberal group Americans United for Change is teaming up with a trio of large unions to air television ads attacking House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and seven potentially vulnerable Republicans for stance on raising the debt ceiling. The targets: Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) and Reps. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.), Steve King (R-Iowa), Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.), Bobby Schilling (R-Ill.) and Ann Marie Buerkle (R-N.Y.). All are potentially vulnerable members who live in inexpensive media markets. Rehberg is running for Senate. The unions participating in the six-figure ad buy are the Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of...

GOP cultists occupy a metaphysical netherworld where basic arithmetic is scorned as an elitist tool. As I write, it's impossible to guess how the latest made-for-TV partisan crisis in Washington will end. We've reached the point where the president of the United States felt he needed to deliver a prime-time speech essentially defending the post-Enlightenment values of reason, evidence and compromise against an obscurantist movement more like a religious cult than a political party. But has President Obama got the guts to deal with the reality facing him? Signs are not encouraging. The standoff has two major components: the adolescent...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Conservative Republicans on Tuesday balked at House leaders' pleas to stop whining and back their plan to slash spending and increase the nation's borrowing ability, throwing into doubt the GOP's proposal to rescue the nation from an unprecedented government default. ... Flanked by conservative colleagues, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told reporters he could not back the Boehner proposal and said it doesn't have the votes to pass. In a two-step plan, Boehner is pressing for a vote on Wednesday and a second vote Thursday on a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. "We think there are real problems...

President Obama and congressional leaders negotiated into the evening on Sunday over an elusive deal to lift the nation’s debt limit, increasing the prospect of economic jitters as markets opened in Asia and across the globe without an agreement. -snip- n the conference call, Boehner asked for support. He said compromises were necessary, but he promised to use the “Cut, Cap, and Balance” amendment as a basis for any compromise, according to a source familiar with the call. Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., seen as playing a key role in reining in Boehner from earlier overtures toward a “grand bargain”...

Congressional leadership reacted on Friday after House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio., ended debt limit talks with the White House.House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.:"Tonight, months after we had begun negotiations with President Obama, Vice President Biden, and the Administration, Speaker Boehner and I are ending discussions with the White House and beginning conversations with Senate leaders in the hopes of finding a solution to the debt limit debate in order to avoid default. Throughout the months of discussions, we have worked to identify real spending cuts, binding budget reforms, structural changes to save our entitlement programs, and significant debt reduction....

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) issued the following statement on the debt limit negotiations: "Tonight, months after we had begun negotiations with President Obama, Vice President Biden, and the Administration, Speaker Boehner and I are ending discussions with the White House and beginning conversations with Senate leaders in the hopes of finding a solution to the debt limit debate in order to avoid default. Throughout the months of discussions, we have worked to identify real spending cuts, binding budget reforms, structural changes to save our entitlement programs, and significant debt reduction. Unfortunately, time and again...

The year is 2012 and the United States has just elected Eric Cantor (R) as the first Jewish president of the United States. Eric calls up his mother a few weeks after election day and says, 'So, Mom, I assume you will be coming to my inauguration?' 'I don't think so. It's a ten hour drive, your father isn't as young as he used to be, and my arthritis is acting up again.' 'Don't worry about it Mom, I'll send Air Force One to pick you up and take you home. And a limousine will pick you up at your...

John Boehner and the Republican caucus in the House passed the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act as promised on a near-party-line vote tonight, 234-190. The move puts the onus back on the White House to propose an alternative or assume responsibility for killing the debt-ceiling hike it contains: Defying a veto threat, the Republican-controlled House passed legislation Tuesday night to slice federal spending by $6 trillion and require a constitutional balanced budget amendment to be sent to the states in exchange for averting a threatened government default.The 234-190 vote marked the power of deeply conservative first-term Republicans, and stood in...

House Republican leaders have missed a 36-hour deadline President Obama set during a Thursday meeting for lawmakers to give him a plan to avert a national default. The deadline came and went Saturday morning without a response from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Instead, Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) plan to move the Cut, Cap and Balance Act on the floor next week, which would require passage of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution before the debt limit is raised. A House GOP leadership aide said at noontime Saturday that Boehner and Cantor did not send...

While Barack Obama went to the press for the third time in 17 days, John Boehner and Eric Cantor called his bluff in the House. The Republican leadership announced that the House would vote on a plan to raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion and matching cuts:

"We want to change the system here," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told a news conference on Friday. "We want to be able to go home to the people who elected us and show them that we're not going to allow this kind of spending to continue. We don't have the money -- they don't have the money." Cantor said Republicans will bring up a bill next week -- the "Cut, Cap and Balance" bill -- "So that we can demonstrate that we are getting things under control and that the people who put us here can gain some...

RUSH: The Republicans remain very nervous, ladies and gentlemen. These idiots at Moody's, or as Stuart Varney says, "Moodis," the rating service clearly joining with the Democrats to put pressure on the House Republicans, the Senate Republicans as well by claiming if we don't raise the debt limit then all is lost, the US reputation gone forever. So the pressure mounts on the Republicans in the House, and so far they're standing firm. I think Obama's cracking, folks, I think he's cracking up. The way I interpret this, this guy's had the road paved for him from the get-go, he's...

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has become both a key player and big pain to more seasoned negotiators in the White House talks over how to keep the government paying its bills after next month. "Eric, don't call my bluff," President Barack Obama warned late Wednesday after a dramatic back-and-forth with the Virginia Republican that made some in Cantor's party wince. "Enough is enough." Not for Cantor, second-in-command to Speaker John Boehner who is widely assumed to aspire to the House's top job. The testy exchange with Obama left Washington bubbling with speculation about whether the self-styled...

Last night, President Obama and Eric Cantor exchanged harsh words over the debt ceiling, and on the Senate floor just now, Harry Reid uncorked a harsh attack on Cantor that suggests Dems are embarking on a new strategy: Isolating Cantor as the new public face of GOP intransigence.

The wounded are especially dangerous fighters. President Obama now occupies the high ground in the debt-ceiling debate, having called the Republicans’ bluff on the debt. He showed that deficit reduction is not now, and never has been, the GOP’s priority. He dare not get overconfident.After thwarting the deal that House Speaker John Boehner was cooking up with Obama, Rep. Eric Cantor, the majority leader and Boehner’s rival, needs to show he knew what he was doing and recoup political ground. Cantor is likely to present Obama with spending cuts that the president once seemed to endorse as part of a...

Barack Obama is today preparing to re-enter talks with Republicans as the two sides battle to reach an agreement in the ongoing debt ceiling crisis. Fuming lawmakers pointed fingers at one another and Obama on Thursday as negotiations over raising the national debt limit entered a perilous endgame. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned of economic damage, and an anxious Wall Street envisioned catastrophe if the U.S. defaulted on its obligations. In the build up to today's meeting, Moody's ratings agency yesterday said that the U.S. could lose its top credit rating in coming weeks if a stand-off between the...

Republicans think they have an easy message to sell to voters: Slash the size of government and stop tax increases. But a sideshow has percolated on Capitol Hill: There are too many Republican messengers with too many messages — often undercutting one another — as the nation teeters on the brink of financial default. It’s a problem for a party searching for a national figure who can go toe to toe politically with Barack Obama. (snip)

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says he didn't mean any disrespect to President Barack Obama during a heated exchange that ended with the president cutting off a White House meeting.