26 March 2009
Dems Will Hold the Bag
Posted by Joy Bischoff under: World Economy .
With this kind of attitude from Nancy Pelosi, it looks like the dems will be left holding the bag when their plan crumbles. Hopefully, by 2012, enough Americans will wake up so we can get some enlightened people into office.
Pelosi: We don’t need GOP on budget
As Senate Democrats continued to wrangle over their version of the budget, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicted swift passage in her chamber — with or without GOP support.
“I hope the bill will pass with bipartisan support,” said Pelosi, who has often preached against banking on Republican support in the lower chamber. “But the bill will pass.”
Cantor at a Crossroads
The House GOP is expected to take up Obama’s dare and unveil its alternative budget today — and it couldn’t come at a better time for House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.).
The heat has been rising on Cantor, often touted as the GOP’s most effective Young Turk, an inheritor of the Newt Gingrich (circa ’93) mantle.
Last week, Cantor ruffled conservative feathers by siding with Democrats (and 80-odd Republicans) in voting for a 90 percent tax on AIG’s bonuses. On Wednesday, The Hill followed recent reporting by my colleague Patrick O’Connor indicating that Cantor’s move put him at odds with many in his own conference.
Cantor, of course, is a victim of his own success. This was the guy who took the backslaps in mustering unanimous GOP opposition to the stimulus bill, and anything that falls short of that performance is bound to raise questions about his effectiveness.
That’s why the rift among House Republicans over the AIG bonus tax — with a grouchy Minority Leader John Boehner voting against and declaring it an exercise in “CYA” — hurt Cantor’s GOP street cred.
He didn’t help his cause with a waffling appearance on “Morning Joe” in which he refused to say where he stood on AIG shortly before last week’s vote. (It’s noteworthy that I first got wind of that appearance from a GOP operative, not a Democrat.)
Cantor, whose tactical intelligence has earned him the respect of many Democrats, was simply outfoxed by the Democratic majority on the AIG bill. Pelosi and Co., employing divide-and-conquer tactics honed from their own days in the minority, used the bonus tax to cleave the GOP into warring free-market and angry-populist camps.
Hence the growing sense that Cantor might be having a Geithner moment. Unveiling a credible, plausible and appealing alternative budget plan, GOP operatives say, could help Cantor (and the whole House GOP) regain some lost mojo.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20502.html
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