Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor walked out of budget talks with Vice President Biden yesterday, probably ending the VP’s attempt at reconciling the debt limit increase debate, at least temporarily. The deadline for raising the debt limit (and forestalling a possible downgrade of the U.S. government’s credit rating) is coming up in August, so it would seem that throwing a temper tantrum now is less than ideal.
The issue, according to Republicans, is that they refuse to raise taxes on anyone at all and won’t vote to raise the debt limit until a deal is reached to trim a dollar-for-dollar amount from government spending against the amount that the debt ceiling is raised. (No one that I know of has yet explained why the amount the debt ceiling is raised is the magic number for cuts – those two numbers seem to be unrelated.)
The Democrats are operating under the assumption, which makes sense to me, that revenues (i.e., taxes) have to increase, at least somewhat, if this country is going to dig itself out of debt. With Cantor bailing on the talks, it looks to a lot of people like he knows he can’t get what he wants, so he’s going to pass the buck to John Boehner, Speaker of the House, to try to make a deal with the President. If that deal includes increased taxes or even closing tax loopholes, then Cantor can escape having to bear any of the blame for raising taxes in a very anti-tax climate. If that truly is the case, it’s exactly the kind of politicking we don’t need right now as a country. Regardless of his true intentions, Cantor’s behavior here is very disappointing.