THERE THEY GO BENDING THE TRUTH AGAIN

This afternoon, as I was flipping through the headlines for today's Washington Post, I noticed that our old friend Eric Cantor had written an op-ed piece. Since I'm always hopeful that the Republican party will put out something sensible, or at the least truthful, I clicked on it and started reading.

I didn't get very far.

My brain quickly glazed over with boredom at the usual role call of taxes hurt business, taxes keep businesses from hiring people, regulation of business hurts businesses, regulation of businesses keeps businesses from hiring people.

Blah, blah, blah.

Funny how Mr. Cantor decided to trot out his favorite side show when the polls show that the majority of Americans, Democrat and Republican alike, support raising taxes on the highest tax brackets and businesses. This is Eric Cantor's way of waving the gold watch in front of everyone's eyes and chanting, "Taxes are bad, taxes are bad..." All in the hopes he'll actually convince you that's true.

Well, we tried the whole tax breaks for the millionaires and billionaires, and tax breaks for corporations, many of whom are pulling in BILLIONS in profits. All it got us was a higher national deficit. No increases in hiring.

And, one statement in particular I'll call bad form on is Mr. Cantor's statement that "[Republicans] had to drag [President Obama] to the table to make even the modest spending cuts that Standard & Poor’s says don’t go far enough."

In fact, President Obama was happily negotiating a plan with Speaker Boehner that included a series of spending cuts, along with tax reforms, until Eric Cantor told Boehner that no such deal would ever get his vote, and the negotiations plug was pulled. If you click on the link to the article where the S & P makes a statement about the debt-ceiling deal, you see that what the S & P actually said was, "the bipartisan agreement reached this week to find at least $2.1 trillion in budget savings 'fell short' of what was necessary to tame the nation’s debt over time".

The statement does not say that the cuts themselves fell short of what was necessary to tame the debt, just the agreement. The agreement that included ZERO TAX REFORM, thanks in no small part to the Republican part, and Eric Cantor in particular.

--Statler, moderator