UPDATED: Eric Cantor’s palace coup: top GOPer ditches budget talks at tax time
House majority whip Eric Cantor and House speaker John Boehner.
When Eric Cantor, the number two Republican in the House of Representatives, abruptly quit budget talks with the White House Thursday morning, the move had “coup” written all over it.
Cantor’s exit from the budget talks comes just when even he says Democrats, led by Vice President Joe Biden, and Republicans, led by … well … Eric Cantor … seemed to be close to an agreement on “trillions of dollars” in economically unwise spending cuts, and some sort of trigger mechanism to prevent the budget from going so far out of balance again. But when it came time to do the tax cut part of the deal; something Republican Senator Tom Coburn has admitted, including on television; Cantor took a walk. Then he said it’s up to President Obama and Speaker Boehner to finish the talks. What gives?
Ezra Klein explains:
Earlier this month, Major Garrett, the congressional correspondent for the National Journal, profiled John Boehner. “It is not by accident that Boehner put Cantor in the room with Vice President Joe Biden to negotiate a debt-ceiling increase and the budget cuts and process reforms necessary to win House passage,” he reported. “Boehner gave up some of his power to protect it. The debt deal must have Cantor’s fingerprints on it.”
But nor is it an accident that Cantor is fleeing the room now that the spending cuts have been chosen and the taxes have to be agreed to. For all the reasons that Boehner needs Cantor’s fingerprints on the deal, Cantor can’t put them there.
Cantor has the credibility with the Tea Party that Boehner lacks. But that’s why Cantor won’t cut the deal. The Tea Party-types support him because he’s the guy who won’t cut the deal. He can’t sign off on tax increases without losing his power base. But if he’s able to throw it back to Boehner, and Boehner cuts the deal, that’s all good for Cantor: Boehner becomes weaker and he becomes stronger. Which is why Boehner will also have trouble making this deal. It’ll mean he made the concessions that Cantor, the true conservative, didn’t. That’s not how he holds onto the gavel in this Republican Party.
One analysis of the House GOP right now is that there are two players in the GOP who can cut a budget deal: Eric Cantor and John Boehner (and, on some of the other budget issues, Appropriations Chair Hal Rogers). One of them is going to have to do it. Which means one of them is going to lose his job. The optimistic take is that what we’re seeing right now is a game of musical chairs over which one of them it’ll be.
Klein sees potential default at the end of this ugly rainbow, with no Republican able to actually make the deal they all know they have to make, leading to possible short term debt ceiling increases and market panic. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. But what could also hurt the U.S. economy would be drastic spending cuts at a time when the economy is still weak, something Fed chair Ben Bernanke has warned about. But then, Bernanke has also warned Republicans not to tie spending cut deals to the debt ceiling in the first place.
Either way, it looks like Republicans will in effect act to harm the U.S. economy, which they may think serves their political interests, though that, too, is not clear. Boehner has to now choose between letting Cantor roll him, but doing the right thing for the country, and playing Cantor’s game and trying to protect himself at the expense of America’s bond rating. Cantor has already made his choice: picking a rush for personal power over “country first.” Now we find out what Boehner (who says he “expects to hear from the president” now that Cantor has bailed, is made of.
Tick-tock…
UPDATE: The WaPo’s Matt Miller urges the White House to try a little creativity, and he blasts the GOP and Cantor thusly:
Okay, kids, let’s review the Republican fiscal position as of today. Eric Cantor has walked out of Joe Biden’s budget talks because Democrats are insisting that tax hikes be part of any debt-ceiling deal. But Cantor and his entire party have already voted for the Ryan budget plan, a plan that does not include any tax hikes and which as a result (despite its controversial spending cuts) still racks up $5.4 trillion in fresh debt over the next decade.
Before Thursday it would have been hard to find a purer example of political posturing and hypocrisy than Republican support for a plan that adds $5.4 trillion to the debt even as Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling. But that phoniness factor has just been increased by Cantor’s huff.
And Greg Sargent puts up a caution flag on interpreting Cantor’s walk-out, saying no matter what, both he and Boehner have a debt ceiling increase in their future.Comments
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Well Boehner got to play golf with the President and Vice President, and Eric didn’t get invited, so now Eric is taking his little putter and going home…….
Is it wishful thinking to suppose that this bit of disarray puts the Dems in a much better position?