Eric Cantor takes time off his schedule
of hostage-taking to attend the White House
Correspondents' Dinner (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is
proposing a clean vote on raising the debt ceiling, but there's a catch: he's only be willing to hold the vote if it is guaranteed to lose.
The No. 2 House Republican says he’d consider a symbolic test vote on the debt ceiling, sure to fail in the House, to show Democrats that the nation’s debt limit won’t be raised by House Republicans without add-ons that reduce government spending.
Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters in the Capitol that “if it is necessary for us to tell the president that [a clean vote] is dead on arrival in the House, I believe we can do that.”
In other words, if Cantor fears enough Republicans would vote for the clean debt limit bill so that a bipartisan majority could raise the debt limit, there won't be a vote. He'll only do it if he thinks he can use it as a tool to bully the Senate and the White House.
I'm really sick of hearing threats like this from the GOP. Sure, raising the debt ceiling is unpopular, but they already voted for adding $1.6 trillion to the national debt with the funding deal to keep the government from shutting down, and their long-term budget plan would add $6 trillion to the national debt.
The point is that they aren't opposed to adding more debt. They just want want to use the need to raise the debt ceiling as leverage to get their way on other items on their agenda. That's hostage-taking, pure and simple, and at some point it's got to stop.
At this point, if they really want to set off a global economic crisis by refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless they get their way on unrelated issues, my attitude is let them. I happen to think they are bluffing, but if they refuse to raise the debt ceiling unless they get things they otherwise couldn't get, so be it.