After Cantor cheerily walked out on budget talks led by VP Joe Biden last month, Andrew Sullivan called Eric Cantor a “shallow, callow fanatic”
They see this ideologically, i.e. not politically. But the political facts are these. Federal tax revenues are at a 50-year low; marginal rates are lower for many than they were when Reagan was president. In a divided government, any achievement requires some sacrifice from both sides. And yet the GOP is insisting that its side offers no sacrifice, even as the other party controls the Senate and the White House. Their own party, moreover, contributed dramatically to the debt we now face. And there is no clear evidence that raising revenues will lead to economic decline. […]
This is brinksmanship with all of our lives, our money, our core financial stability and future growth. It is an outrageously reckless way to run a government.
via Cantor’s Cant – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast.
Eric Cantor is being berated by Sullivan for trying to pull the budget deal towards Paul Ryan’s no new taxes, dollar for dollar trade of cuts for debt ceiling increase, medicare busting budget plan…but Paul Ryan is still very bold and serious because he was the first to propose drastic cuts to entitlement spending. Mind you, dragging all of this out has been in the GOP schedule from the beginning. The so serious Paul Ryan acknowledged the coming “brinkmanship” in May:
Just a day after Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced that the United States had hit its $14.3 trillion debt limit, Rep. Paul Ryan predicted that negotiations over raising the limit would go until the “last minute” – despite Geithner’s entreaties to act “as soon as possible” in order to prevent an economic crisis.
These guardians of low tax rates for the rich have cynically used the debt ceiling and expanding deficit as cover for their anti-tax agenda. All the plans on the table all inflate the federal deficit more than doing nothing. We will not be better off after August 2nd whether an agreement is made or not.