Cantor weighs-in on Wisconsin
By JR Hoeft | Friday, February 25th, 2011 | PolicyMajority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) made comments in “The Hill” today about the federal budget battle and what’s happening in Wisconsin:
Republicans in Washington share the motivation of Gov. Scott Walker (R) in Wisconsin, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Friday.
Cantor, the second-ranking Republican in the House, said that Republicans’ fight to cut spending, both with a short-term funding measure and their budget next year, shares the “same thrust” with Walker and other GOP governors’ efforts to rein in spending.
“There is an attempt on the part of all responsible governors right now and their state legislators right now to try and balance their budgets,” Cantor said on a conference call about the continuing resolution (or “CR”) House Republicans will put forward later Friday afternoon.
That CR would fund the government at reduced levels for another two weeks after the government runs out of money on March 4.
“That’s what the debate in Wisconsin is about,” Cantor said. “That’s what the debate in this CR is all about.”
Tags:
Contribute for Conservatism!
Share this post
About the author
Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. E-mail J.R.. Follow J.R. on Twitter.
We're 75% there! Thank you to everyone who has so far contributed! Just $2000 to go!
Comments
15 Responses to "Cantor weighs-in on Wisconsin"
There’s a new flash. Cantor wants to strip workers of their right to a seat at the table. Fortunately, republicans are now forced by the Governor to reveal their true intent; put asunder any opportunity for workers to have a place at the table. This has absolutely nothing to do with cuts to the budget; the employees had already agreed to be part of the budget solution. This is simply removing any obstacle to the take over of this nation by corporate interests. Thank you Governor Walker and Rep. Cantor for removing the veil from the code words. Now we really do know the social revolution you want to occur.
I’m with Mike Barrett.
Government workers are suppose to make more money than their private sector counterparts. After all , the Government workers keep us going in the private sector, right? Private sector scum bag corporations owe all the saintly Government workers down at the dmv insurance, retirement and a new prius. And a vacation three times a year to Disney land.
Once on the union roll, well your in for life. The scumbag corporations have the luxury of scratching a living out of whatever pluck and back breaking labor they can come up with to put the bologona on the table. And for their efforts, the saintly union government employees harras, fine, enforce whatever new rule or code the saints were able to pull out of the air this week.
GO UNION. AND go broke.
Watch Rhode Island. As one of the most union-friendly states AND one of the most vulnerable (highest per capita unfunded pension liability), it will be interesting to see when, how, and if the RI legislature plans to fix it. They may have no choice; today’s headline: “The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has signaled plans to investigate Rhode Island’s pension, which has an unfunded liability of $5 billion.” Moody’s also announced another big change last month –unfunded pension obligations (together with bond value), will be included in all future analysis and calculations for states’ credit ratings. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/business/27pension.html
RI Treasurer, Gina Raimondo, sums up the problem in 8 sentences: “The unfunded pension liability nationwide is a $3 trillion problem. TARP, we were prepared as a country to put aside $700 billion. The bailout of Fannie and Freddie was $400 billion. They all pale in comparison to the enormity of this financial challenge. And marginal change won’t fix it. Tinkering won’t fix it. Pretending we don’t have a problem won’t fix it. Looking in the eye of this enormous financial problem honestly and recommending fundamental changes to a system, I believe, is the solution.”
Mike Barrett, the unions have fought ‘fundamental changes’ for years. IYO, what would be a fair solution?
Jay,
Your numbers are a bit off. According to SIGTARP Neil Barofsky, at the height of the bailout fever in 2009 the U.S. government was effectively on the hook for as much as $23.7 Trillion.
http://www.economicpopulist.org/files/barofskytestimony07202009.pdf
While this grand total wasn’t finally deployed, it had been made possible. In other words, to temporarily thwart a new Depression, the Fed and Treasury had to promise the global financial markets they’d do whatever it took, even if that was an amount of “support” that totaled one-third of global GDP.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html
And if that weren’t interesting enough, the boys at Davos have stated plainly that the world needs $100 Trillion in new credit. I wonder where it will come from? I wonder what effect that will have on commodity prices? I wonder what effect those new commodity prices will have on middle east unrest?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/davos/8267768/World-needs-100-trillion-more-credit-says-World-Economic-Forum.html
You guys don’t seem to talk about money very much. Does politics occur in isolation?
Jay D, many in the Virginia business community have sought for years to call attention to the unfunded liabilities of VRS. But of course, there are no public employee labor unions in Virginia. Fact is, last year, the Governor stopped reform, and frankly, I still don’t know what will happen in this year’s Legislature. Point is, this is not a union issue; it is a state issue in almost every state in the union that will challenge politicians, and us, the voters, to act in a fiscally responsible way. We had the chance last year, but punted. We’ll see this year.
Mike Barrett ~The NEA is a labor union in some states and a “professional organization” in others. Wonder why?? The VEA is a NEA state affiliate. Local chapters are affiliates of the VEA/NEA …all ‘organizations’ that have consistently fought system overhaul. Their position (from the NEA site): “The traditional public pension system is a vital stimulus to the economy that safeguards the delivery of vital taxpayer services. It is a sound system. Funding shortfalls can be avoided without overturning the entire system.”
“If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck …”
OTOH, pandering isn’t limited to just one political party ~ Scott Rigell, who promised us just a few months back to “take the difficult but necessary steps to back into what can be spent, given our current revenues”, today fights Defense Secretary Gate’s plan to increase (by $5 month for family/ $2.50 month single) the amount retired, working-age military personnel pay for health care coverage. “Rep. E. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) told Gates that based on his conversations with retirees, who had enlisted with the expectation that they would get free health care for life, the proposed increase was “a breach of trust to change the deal.” [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/16/AR2011021607106.html]
Gimme a break, Scott! Call Dad; he’ll remind you the original deal was free health care … on a space available basis… at a military health facility. But just like every other taxpayer-funded bene, TRICARE morphed well beyond original intentions and ballooned into a bloated, politically sacrosanct entitlement.
We have ALL got to take a hit at state and federal levels; otherwise, the can (AGAIN) gets kicked down the road and our kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids pay the ultimate price.
Well Jay D, I recommend that employee groups push to have 401k plans available to them to replace the traditional plans not as much for government’s benefit, but for their own benefit. Just as Governor McDonnell “borrowed” from the employee’s pension fund last year, so have many other Governors done the same. Point is, employee groups can’t trust politicians to fund their pension plan, just like the sick, the disabled, and the poor can no longer trust politicians to repair and maintain the basic human safety net. The trend toward selfishness, trickle down economics, and country club benefits for the wealthy is going up while humaneness and selfishness rule the day. There really are effects of elections. Watch out middle class, if they get union workers, they are coming after you!
Jaime Jacoby: please reread my post.
1) TARP figures were part of quote by RI Treasurer – they were not “my numbers”. Regardless, within context of the interview subject (RI’s unfunded pensions), her point was to compare cost of recent very large (and very contentious) government spending bills… to illustrate SIZE, not to indicate support for/against TARP and Fannie/Freddie bailouts. BTW & FWIW, Raimondo (Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Harvard U. and Yale Law) came to the post after a career in venture capital. I’m guessing she knows a bit about finance?
2) Your Davos snippet references WEF opinion, whose members are the top/largest 1000 corporations in the world. As I understand it, there is significant mistrust (particularly within the libertarian community) and open charges that WEF policy recommendations favor investors and lenders.
So, your point is ….???? And what part of money do you want to discuss?
Mike, for very different reasons, we can agree moving to 401k plan/ private sector-type pensions would be a terrific first step, benefiting both parties (taxpayer and employee) in the long run. AND we could probably find common ground elsewhere if YOUR side would drop the threats and both sides drop the name-calling?!
Jay,
Trust me, I read your post.
Going to an Ivy League school and then getting an economics degree from a major university doesn’t necessarily convey competence, and I am somewhat alarmed by your willingness to make that connection so cavalierly:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/bios/board/bernanke.htm
“Dr. Bernanke…received a B.A. in economics in 1975 from Harvard University (summa cum laude) and a Ph.D. in economics in 1979 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
You cited numbers as a method of showing scale. So did I. The pension problem is large and looming, but no one seems to recognize the fact that the original problems that set off the crisis haven’t even been addressed yet. Pensions and CMBS will merely be the next wave, along with an additional $1T of residential refis. Pensions are underfunded in large measure because of the meltdown of the MBS that so many pension plans hold.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/03/new-credit-suisse-arm-recast-chart.html
“CalPERS has sued Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. executives and underwriters. The complaint alleges that Lehman failed to disclose its exposure to subprime loans when Lehman sold CalPERS about $700 million in bonds.”
http://www.calpers.ca.gov/index.jsp?bc=/about/press/news/invest-corp/home.xml
What recovery?
http://cr4re.com/charts/charts.html#category=Employment&chart=EmploymentRecessionsAlignedNov.jpg
If your point is that the $3T she cites will set off another ACA/MBIA/FGIC (CDS/reinsurer) => AIGFP => Bear => Lehman debacle, requiring another few tens of $Trillions in taxpayer backstopping, well, it just might prove to be that.
BTW, Credit Default Swaps were invented by people with similar qualifications.
Is there some reason you believe the Davos attendees won’t get what they want? You cited their creds; are they powerful enough to do what they want? What do YOU think?
My point is that so many want to discuss the next crisis in isolation, as if it were independent of everything else that has happened and everything that is happening.
That is the mistake. This is no normal economic downturn. Solving this one requires tackling and solving big picture problems, the ones that the major political process has postponed and postponed because everyone on the inside thought they could get away with postponing forever, or at least until someone else was in office.
Yes, the incredible irony of Governor Walker, and Representative Cantor, blaming public employees for the fiscal crisis would be hilarious if the consequences were not so severe. Our basic crisis is the result of the very rich pursuing even more riches through leverage, and when they didn’t work out, they got their politicial minions to bale them out. So republicans, who represent and support the very rich, need an enemy to blame, and right now, it is labor unions. But of course, if they get them, their target will be us, the idiots who let them get away with this scam.
“Our basic crisis is the result of the very rich pursuing even more riches through leverage, and when they didn’t work out, they got their politicial minions to bale them out.” Your words Mike.. Why do Democrats like you who are rich say only Republicans like me are for the rich? You dems want poor people to vote for your candidates so you give other peoples money to them so even more of those poor people will vote for your candidates while republicans generally do not play that game. That’s dandy in the short term for votes Mike but it’s not really good for the country in the long-run now is it. Republicans by and large, even rinos, think its better if people have opportunities to work and successfully support themselves. To help reduce the collective burden should like minded dems not have babies until they are married, find employment, learn to take care of ones family and plan for the future? Just sayin..
Mike, the Tea Party movement is calling out dems and gop rinos who essentially are telling the poor to ABANDON PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, the nanny state will care of your worries. Most people today don’t want to take responsibility for their lives but want handouts from other people. No not just rich people, every people who pays taxes.
Dems promise to take care of you so you’ll vote for them. Conservatives want you to stop feeding at the public trough, take care of yourself, and want to help you to become more self dependent.
Here is a new political slogan I came up with so pass this on to your rich democrat friends backing those poor dem candidates. “Don’t waste time thinking for yourself, Vote Democrat!” Like it Mikey?
Well James, the one thing you can count on is for the newly elected Congress to overreach. So far, they are patting themselves on the back and buying double scotch at the bar. That’s because to date, they have actually done nothing so the effects their $60B in cuts would cause have not yet happened. Despite the pleas from Governors around the nation, republican and democrat alike, they have ignored the inevitable results of their proposed cuts on state and local economies and acted like spoiled children. Perhaps they will be saved by the Senate, and can gloat about what they might have done instead of having to defend the actal effects their actions would have had on the national economy.
Mike, neither party seems to have the intestines to digest the common sense needed to solve the problem.. Congress lacks the guts to do better than make a measly $60B in cuts.. $60B is an accounting error in the Obama Era (error?).. add another zero and we will cut something useful. Wanna bet we will turn our economy around fast that way? Might not have to bet, might happen anyway by sticking to plan O. We can look back and say to ourselves gosh darnit we should have done this sooner. Cut a trillion of the fed budget, leave state funds alone and lets start bailing the water out and right this listing ship which by the way is listing dangerously to port.
It’s not intestines, Turbo… it’s testicular fortitude.
Leave your response