Today's exclusive guest, the House majority leader, Eric Kantor (R-VA), stressed that investment should come from the private sector and not from government, and on the face of it, that's the way we want it to be. Even Congressman James Clyburn (D-SC), on today's panel, said that government should not create jobs. Where the difference comes in is that Republicans do not believe that government should do anything when it comes to the business sector. Conversely, Democrats believe that government can set the climate that serves as the impetus for the private sector to create jobs. What Mr. Kantor describes, and what most of his Republican colleagues want, is the trickle down economic model. This is to say that corporations and business owners should be given the most latitude and/or leniency in terms of regulation and taxation and thus that money will filter through the economic system to the rest of the country.
Frankly, we've tried that, more than once, and it hasn't had the desired effect. The factual result is that the income gap between the wealthiest and the poorest keeps growing. The major flaw of this political thinking, which this column believes the Republicans fully understands but does not concern the party greatly, is that corporations are not held to a standard of having Americans' best interests in mind, the government does. A country needs economic borders as well as physical ones, and the government has to set those borders so that multi-national corporations who create jobs all over the world do not do it at the expense of The United States and its citizenry.
We think we can all agree that spending cuts need to be made, but that one, Republicans are looking in the wrong places and two, the Democrats do not have the political will to cut where it best serves the country in terms of our debt. It was interesting to hear CNBC's Erin Burnett say that Wall Street was very concerned about the debt and that there needs to be reduction measures. We believe that this is a concern of Wall Street because they hear that Republican politicians flirt with the notion of not extending the debt ceiling, which would then send The United States into default to its creditors, which would obviously be bad for business. We're not naive in thinking the government works this way, but it would be helpful for Congress to keep in mind that when an individual gets that notice in the mail that their credit limit has been increased, it doesn't mean that they have to them automatically max out his or her card. Point being, the government can extend the debt ceiling and still make cuts to dramatically slow the increase in borrowing.
So what cuts? Realistically, defense needs to be looked at first, which goes back to our point above about the respective parties. Mr. Kantor said that everything is on the table, but if you follow Congressman Paul Ryan's (R-WI) "Road Map," which Mr. Kantor does believe in, defense is off the table for cuts, but Social Security and Medicare are subject to big cuts so everything is not on the table.
Republicans haven't been specific about what they would cut, and we didn't expect Mr. Kantor to give Mr. Gregory any specifics on today's program. When will the Republicans give specifics? When Frank Lunz has figured out a syntactically clever way to sell it to the American people. Then you'll get the announcement by Speaker Boehner at a podium surrounded by Mr. Kantor and many Republican colleagues. [A little cynical here - yes, but this is how it's been going.] Simply the fact that when Mr. Gregory asked about Social Security, Mr. Kantor framed his answer in terms of 'entitlements,' which is being spun as a bad thing. When he refers to entitlements, he's referring to Social Security. Depending on how you frame the question - Are you for cuts to entitlements for people? Most people would say yes. Are you for cuts to Social Security? The answer would be no.
There was mention of Speaker Boehner's health plan which would add 3 million people to the rolls, but this falls far short of any significant dent in the total number of the uninsured. During the panel, the good point was made that health care reform passed this time after so many failed tries was because so many groups understood that the status quo was no longer viable. Again, Mr. Kantor, as he did with the answer to spending cuts, explained that Republicans will break up into their respective committees to come up with an alternative health care bill.
But really what this interview told us, in our gut, is that Mr. Kantor is a good politician, but he is no leader... He tags on. He tags on to Congressmen Boehner and Ryan, but we've never heard him make a declarative with authority. And the case in point is the silly question of President Obama's citizenship, on which Mr. Gregory pressed Congressman Kantor. Body language says a lot as Mr. Kantor leaned back in his chair, looked upward at the lights instead of at Mr. Gregory and gave a resigned agreement that yes, Mr. Obama is a U.S. citizen - a weak display of strength in belief and leadership, even in the face of ridiculousness.
We were a little salty in this week's column but there is a reason. Karen Hughes, former advisor to George W. Bush, made some statements that need to be rebutted, because none of the other individuals on the roundtable today did. The very professional decorum of Meet The Press is one of the reasons why we write this column. Ms. Hughes said that we lost 800,000 jobs in the month Barack Obama took office, completely discounting and downplaying her former boss's instrumental role in causing that. She also said that the Bush tax cuts saved a massive tax increase on the American people. This is simply a false equivalent. The tax deal was for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, NOT the American people.
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