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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor outlined a kinder, gentler House Republican agenda for the coming term that puts a greater emphasis on kitchen table issues, and called for a path to citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP/The Huffington Post) — House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says he never suggested that disaster funds for victims of Hurricane Irene should be held up by budget concerns.
The Virginia Republican told reporters after meeting constituents on Wednesday in Richmond that the House has already found sufficient savings to provide billions in dollars in disaster relief for victims of Irene, the hurricane that pummeled the East Coast this past weekend.
Cantor says it is the Democratic-led Senate that is holding up legislation that would authorize funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
He adds: “There are no strings attached. We found the money.”
Cantor forgets that we all heard what we heard on video. How strange that after he gets guff from all sides about making insensitive remarks in the event of a major US natural disaster, he finds the money? This is a fast job of back-pedaling and it is very obvious that Cantor was just trying to score some points with his conservative base.
There are some things that just aren’t subject to the ‘cut the spending’ mantra of Cantor’s tea party politics. Meanwhile, where is Katia? Hopefully Katia is blowing out to see. Many areas in the Northeast still haven’t seen the last of the ravages of Irene.
Was Cantor trying to tell us that Harry Reid made him make those stupid remarks? Yea, that’s the ticket. Harry Reid made him do it.
Is Eric Cantor nuts? Millions of people are facing down a category 3 hurricane headed towards the major cities on the east coast. Is this the kind of news they need to hear?
According to businessinsider.com:
A spokesperson for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said that if there is any damage caused by Hurricane Irene requiring federal disaster funding, the money would have to be balanced out by spending cuts elsewhere in government.We aren’t going to speculate on damage before it happens, period,” his spokesperson Laena Fallon told TalkingPointsMemo. “But, as you know, Eric has consistently said that additional funds for federal disaster relief ought to be offset with spending cuts.”
If the storm causes damage while passing over highly populated areas as predicted, help from the federal government might not be quick in coming.
Already states from North Carolina to New York have declared states of emergency in preparation for the storm.
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) has been a bit of a pain in the arse lately. He has acted as one of the chief spokemen for the GOP in the debt ceiling talks and rumor has it that Rep. Bonher is less than happy with him. Cantor’s main problem seems to be combating that old problem of just looking mean. According to the Daily Beast:
As Monday’s White House budget talks got down to the nitty-gritty, Eric Cantor proposed a series of spending cuts, one of them aimed squarely at college students.
The House majority leader, who did most of the talking for the Republican side, said those taking out student loans should start paying interest right away, rather than being able to defer payments until after graduation. It is a big-ticket item that would save $40 billion over 10 years.
President Obama responded:
“I’m not going to do that,” Obama said. “I’m not going to take money from old people and screw students,” not without some compromise on the tax-increase side.
And screwing students is exactly what that move would be. How can a student pay interest when he or she is still in school and in all probability does not have a job? Where is the common sense here? Does Cantor just speak to hear himself talk? There are some very realistic cuts that can be made in the economy. Student loans aren’t the place to start curbing the deficit. Do these people really believe half that comes out of their mouth?
The above video is the cell phone footage taken by Jon Taylor’s son during his arrest in Louisa, Virginia. Something has made me uncomfortable about this video for the past 24 hours.
First off, we have to footage of what precipitated this scuffle. From what I can tell, Taylor, his wife and son went to the Solid Grounds Coffee Shop on Main Street in downtown Louisa. They had accepted an RSVP on the Cantor Website. Ms. Taylor was carrying a sign for Canter’s opponent.
According to the Richmond Times Dispatch:
The car, parked at a meter directly in front of the restaurant, was Taylor’s. His wife sat inside. A poster for Democratic candidate Rick Waugh, calling Cantor a chicken, was taped to the car window facing the coffee shop.
Taylor said Cantor had promoted the event on his website, so he assumed it was a public event.
“We RSVP’d,” he said.
Today the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission which overturned a hundred years of campaign finance laws, including part of the McCain FeingoldAct. Corporations and Unions can now spend money directly on the support of candidates. According to Michael Waldman of the Washington Post:
This far-reaching ruling augurs a significant power struggle. For the first time since 1937, an increasingly conservative federal judiciary faces a progressive and activist Congress and president. Until now, it was unclear how the justices would accommodate the new political alignment. The Citizens United decision suggests an assertive court, eager to overturn precedent, looming as a challenge to President Obama’s agenda.
The Atlantic explains the decision:
Justice Kennedy, in the majority opinion, reasoned that the government can’t discriminate against speakers based on their corporate identities, and that “all speakers, including individuals and the media, use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech, and the First Amendment protects the resulting speech.”
This basically eliminates a middleman: before today, corporations and unions had to set up PACs (political action committees), filed separately with the IRS, that would receive donations. And they did. Corporations and unions spend millions of dollars on elections. Now, however, the accounting firewall is gone, and Wal-Mart or the Service Employees International Union, for instance, can spend their corporate/union money directly on candidates.
