Tag Archives: Eric Cantor

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Obama: “I will not yield”

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“I’ve reached my limit. This may bring my Presidency down, but I will not yield on this.”
– President Obama to Eric Cantor and Congressional Republicans
in a closed-door meeting at the White House.

President Obama has had enough of Republicans’ childish games.

Despite weeks of negotiations, Republicans are still holding our economy hostage with their ridiculous demands.

The President stuck his neck out in the face of vicious GOP attacks and media spin. Now he needs your support.

Stand with President Obama: Sign our petition right now telling the GOP to end special tax breaks for Millionaires, Billionaires and Big Oil.

That’s right: Republicans are still refusing to budge on ending even one penny of tax breaks for Billionaires and Big Oil.

We need to send an immediate message to Republicans. Stand with the President today >>

Rep. Steve Israel
DCCC Chairman

P.S. Once you sign the petition, forward this email to three friends and ask them add their names too!

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Stuck in a ditch …AFL – CIO


When your car breaks down in a ditch and you need it to get to work, what do you do?

A. Fix it, even if you have to responsibly take out a loan—and work harder over time to pay off the debt, even if it means taking a second job.

B. Stay in the ditch, throw a tantrum and default on your mortgage.

The economy still is reverberating from the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression. But rather than work to fix our economy, congressional Republicans are willing to keep it in a ditch.

Two leading Republicans—Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.)—recently left budget negotiations and are threatening to force default on our national debt if they don’t get their way.

Tell President Obama and congressional Democrats: Stand up to bullies. Don’t let working families get stuck in a ditch.   http://act.aflcio.org/salsa/track.jsp?v=2&c=UZ3aVnXHtxRDesymLrVOYnBq%2BlrJVD9v

When our economy’s broken, we need leaders who will fix it—not politicians who throw temper tantrums when millionaires and billionaires are asked to pay their fair share. Programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are not just lifelines for working people and poor families—they’re all that’s stopping our economy from falling off a cliff again.

With businesses not hiring and wages flat, every dollar in cuts will hurt the economy—and cuts that hurt middle-class and poor Americans will hurt the economy most. Some jaded Republican politicians are willing to let that happen. They figure that if the economy tanks, it’ll cost Barack Obama the 2012 election—and that’s all they care about.

To fix our economy, we can and should be building up the American middle class—not tearing it down. We need to educate our children, build a clean energy future and invest in 21st century American infrastructure that makes us competitive in the world. It’s time to act like the wealthy, compassionate, imaginative country we are—not let hypocritical politicians turn us into an impoverished nation.

Let President Obama and congressional Democrats know working people need them to reject radical demands and stand up to temper tantrums. Demand a fair budget deal that keeps our economy growing.    http://act.aflcio.org/salsa/track.jsp?v=2&c=qp3JHjN2szJ7nA9DG22cUHBq%2BlrJVD9v

Some congressional Republicans say they’ll accept a temporary default on our national debt to get the cuts they demand. But it’s a big lie. A temporary default would hurt Wall Street and Big Banks more than it would hurt working folks. And Wall Street controls enough of our politics these days that it will never happen.

The reality is, a deal will have to be reached soon to keep us from defaulting on our national debt—and if President Obama and congressional Democrats stand strong, that deal doesn’t have to hurt working families.

 Vice President Biden said, “We’re never going to get this done, we’re never going to solve our debt problem if we ask only those who are struggling in this economy to bear the burden and let the most fortunate among us off the hook.” We agree.  

Urge the president—and congressional Democrats—to keep standing with working families against bullies, and to protect America’s future.      http://act.aflcio.org/salsa/track.jsp?v=2&c=2I1tjcLTrunVxECYzq9tm11WX7swzlJA

Thank you for standing with us.

In Solidarity,

Richard L. Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

P.S. The ”Robin Hood in Reverse” budget ideas proposed by congressional Republicans are shocking:
Congressional Republicans want to end Medicare as we know it and put Americans at the mercy of private insurance companies. Congressional Republicans voted for a radical budget that would end Medicare and replace it with underfunded vouchers for private insurance. It would cause a typical 65-year-old to spend $6,359 more per year out of pocket for health care in 2022.
    
Congressional Republicans want hundreds of billions in cuts to Medicaid. These cuts would hurt millions of children and seniors in nursing homes. Medicaid is health care of last resort. It’s for poor kids and our most vulnerable senior citizens. It saves the lives of countless children each year and keeps senior citizens in quality nursing homes. According to Families USA, “Every federal Medicaid dollar that flows into a state stimulates business activity and generates jobs.” Cutting Medicaid will kill jobs—and there are way too few private-sector jobs to fill in the gap.
    
Congressional Republicans want to rob the Social Security Trust Fund. Social Security has a $2.6 trillion surplus—and will pay full benefits through 2037 if we just leave it alone. Even after that, it will pay 78 percent of benefits. It’s completely separate from the federal budget. We have time to make responsible fixes to shore up Social Security in the long term, separate from the immediate budget issues.

Tell President Obama and congressional Democrats: Don’t cut Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Make millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share.

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Budget: The Perilous Politics Of Ending Medicare


On Wednesday, the Washington Post suggested that, despite voting to overwhelmingly approve Rep. Paul Ryan‘s (R-WI) budget just last month, Republicans may have seen the political writing on the wall and are now slowly backing away from one of the plan’s most unpopular provisions: transforming Medicare from a guaranteed benefit into a “premium support” voucher for future retirees. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) still promised that Republicans would “press for all the provisions in the Ryan proposal” in their negotiations with Democrats and insisted that “the starting point is the Ryan budget.” But he also hinted that the party could be open to taking the Medicare changes off the table. “Cantor said negotiators could avoid the ‘big three,'” which Democrats have vowed to defend, by focusing on changes in other areas. “If we can come to some agreement [and] act to effect those savings now, this year, it will yield a lot of savings in subsequent years,” he said. As one GOP strategist put it to the Los Angeles Times, “Why keep pushing something if it’s political kryptonite and it’s not going anywhere anyway?” The GOP has attempted to paper over these disagreements, releasing multiple statements reaffirming their commitment to the GOP budget, but the discomfort among its ranks and the public continues to grow.

NO HEARINGS: On Thursday, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) told reporters that he was not planning on holding any hearings about Ryan’s proposal. “I’m not really interested in just laying down more markers,” said Camp, acknowledging that Ryan’s plan to give “premium support” vouchers to future Medicare retirees was a non-starter. “I’d rather have the committee working with the Senate and the president, focusing on savings and reforms that can be signed into law.” “I don’t think we can afford to wait,” he added, “I think we needed to make progress now.” In the Senate, Susan Collins (R-ME) is the only Republican senator to openly oppose Ryan’s plan, but a growing number of Republicans are also expressing doubts about the program. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) told Talking Points Memo that while he would vote for Ryan’s proposal, “there are other proposals that deserve serious consideration and I’m waiting to see what those are and I might vote for those as well,” he said. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) agreed, saying, “There is a discussion of two or three different alternatives being offered…some will be different on Medicare, others will have balance sooner.”

RAUCOUS TOWN HALLS: In the past two weeks, as congressmen went back to hold town halls in their districts, a major constituent backlash ensued against the Medicare plan and other aspects of the GOP budget. Constituents booed Ryan for arguing that the tax breaks for the richest Americans should expire. Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) faced a barrage of questions from outraged constituents about the GOP plan to privatize Medicare, and Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY) confronted the ire of constituents who were upset about tax dodging by some of the nation’s largest corporations. Given this backlash, it’s understandable why House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has repeatedly said that he is not wedded to Ryan’s plan and prospective GOP presidential candidates are remaining weary. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has said he would back a slightly more moderate version of Ryan’s Medicare proposal, and former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) is refusing to explicitly endorse the Medicare plan. In fact, the GOP budget may even be putting former “Craigslist Congressman” Christopher Lee’s (R-NY) seat in play. GOP candidate Jane Corwin has vigorously defended the Ryan proposal, only to see herself lose ground to Democratic challenger Kathy Hoschul — a critic of the plan. “Ms. Hochul’s message seems to strike a chord in the district, where the race has become much closer than experts in either party had expected,” the New York Times reported. “A recent Siena College poll of likely voters, for example, indicated that Ms. Corwin and Ms. Hochul are in a tight race. Ms. Corwin leads by only five points, within the poll’s margin of error.” New polling has found the race has tightened further.

PUBLIC OPPOSITION GROWS: The GOP’s effort to present itself as eager to compromise with Democrats represents a change in tone and a departure from how Ryan himself has characterized the budget in town halls across Wisconsin and to national audiences. Speaking to ABC’s Christiane Amanpour last week, Ryan said that if Republicans don’t push boldly forward with his proposal, they deserve to be voted out of office. “Look, literally, Christiane, if all we fear about is our political careers, then we have no business having these jobs. If you want to be good at these jobs, you’ve got to be willing to lose the job.” And while Ryan did find a good deal of support at many of his town hall meetings, the Congressman was also routinely challenged by his constituents on his plan to lower tax cuts for the rich and transform Medicare into a “premium support” system in which seniors received a pre-determined sum of dollars to purchase health coverage from private insurers. Wisconsinites pressed Ryan on why the money used to extend the Bush tax cuts wasn’t being applied to the deficit, why their children would not receive the same guaranteed Medicare benefits they’ve enjoyed, and why the government’s “premium support” did not keep up with medical inflation. A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that this attitude is reflective of the national mood. “More than twice as many voters oppose efforts to change Medicare than those who favor limiting benefits,” the poll found. Even after being told that told that “Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and defense comprise 60 percent of the federal budget,” 70 percent of voters said they were against reducing benefits while just 27 percent supported it.

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BUDGET: Continuing Mis-Appropriation


The Progress Report

The battle over the 2011 federal budget has degenerated into a game in which Republicans move the parameters of negotiations in order to slash ever deeper into programs which aid middle-class Americans and others in need, while also targeting measures that support the economic recovery. So far, a series of continuing resolutions have provided temporary stop-gap funding, thus warding off a shutdown, but that option appears spent. On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said, “Time is up here,” and that he would not support “a short-term CR without a long-term commitment.” The question of budget riders is also coming to a head, with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) flatly refusing to allow Republican provisions that would defund health care reform and Planned Parenthood, among other programs. Meanwhile, Democrats offer increasing capitulations on the budget number, chasing the tail of Republican demands. The outlines of a possible deal have emerged, but if that falls through, then the threat of a government shutdown is waiting in the wings. Perhaps summing up the sentiments best, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) reassured nervous Republicans by bluntly asserting that, if they hold the line, “We’re gonna kick their ass.”

UNPOPULIST REVOLT: The strange saga of the 2011 budget began with a February proposal by the House Republicans to cut $32 billion relative to current spending levels. This fell short of the cuts originally demanded by the incoming freshman Tea Partiers, but at the time, even the Republican leadership did not have the stomach for such extreme reductions. Tea Party congressmen, apparently unfazed by whatever concerns were holding back their leadership, forced the Republicans to pass a budget, H.R. 1, a budget with $57 billion in cuts. In fact, the Tea Party stance has become so unforgiving that a strange good-cop-bad-cop split has emerged in which Eric Cantor has begun parroting the Tea Party line while John Boehner has presented the face of negotiation, attempting to work around the extremists in his own party. As for the Democrats, they understandably balked at the $57 billion figure, and along with the White House, have floated a compromise offer of approximately $30 billion in further cuts. But this does not appear sufficient to satisfy the Republicans’ far right. Nor has the Democrats’ proposal to expand the cuts beyond non-defense discretionary spending made much headway. One top Republican aide went so far as to state, “This debate has always been about discretionary spending — not autopilot ‘mandatory’ spending or tax hikes.”

BLEEDING THE MOST VULNERABLE: Republicans are singling out non-defense discretionary spending, which provides the most support to the middle-class. The cuts in the H.R. 1 slash funding for transportation infrastructure, workplace safety, regulation of commodity and energy speculation, and inspections for food, drugs, and consumer products. They also bite deeply into security for railroads, ports, subways and air travel, cut $1.3 billion from local law enforcement, reduce funds for drinking-water infrastructure, threaten to deny 9.4 million individuals Pell grants, and even cut the budget for programs to counter the international proliferation of nuclear weapons. As for the poor, a recent report by the poverty reduction campaign Half In Ten found within H.R. 1 a laundry list of assaults on our society’s most vulnerable members. They include: denying 10,000 low-income veterans housing vouchers and cutting off 218,000 low-income children from early learning opportunities provided by Head Start. Job training and other employment services for 8 million people are also eliminated, as are hundreds of millions of dollars for assistance to dislocated workers, career pathway grants for community colleges, low-income community development, FEMA’s emergency food and shelter funds, community health centers, prenatal and postnatal care for low-income women, and preventative health care for low-income families. And all this while corporate profits are near record highs, the richest fifth of Americans lay claim to half the nation’s income, and unemployment remains at 9 percent. In fact, Half In Ten’s report concluded the GOP‘s cuts could push the unemployment rate back up to 10 percent, Goldman Sachs economists predicted a 1.5 to 2 percentage point drop in economic growth, and Moody’s Mark Zandi predicted 400,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2011 if cuts were enacted.

THE AGONY AND THE IRONY: As of this writing, hints have emerged that negotiations between Republicans and Democrats may have reopened over the $30 billion figure, placing the budget right back where the Republicans had originally proposed. But even $30 billion in cuts would still deal a severe blow to the American economy, the middle-class and millions of the country’s least fortunate citizens — all while leaving intact enormously expensive tax cuts for the wealthy and tax expenditures which have allowed major American corporations to get away with paying to taxes at all. As such, even this “relatively” mild outcome would hurt too many Americans. A sound alternative put forward by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), which would have attempted to reset the budget debates for 2011, 2012 and beyond by opening up other spending cuts and revenue increases as options, has been left on the cutting room floor. And in a bitter irony, the Democrats’ willingness to bend over backwards has thoroughly put the lie to what has been one of the Republicans’ main talking points: that if a shutdown does occur, it will be due to the Democrats’ intransigence.

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URGENT: House Republican​s preparing to defend DOMA!


In the wake of President Obama’s courageous decision to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), radical lawmakers have sunk to a new low.

Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor have spent this past week working to placate anti-LGBT members of Congress and their right wing base by indicating they will defend DOMA – no matter what it takes.

So much for their pledges to focus on jobs and the economy. These so-called fiscal conservatives are wasting Congress’s time and resources to defend discrimination.

We’ve never taken these attacks sitting down – and we can’t start now. Time and again, our opponents lash out when we make progress. And time and again we band together to stop them. We’ve got to do it again this week, with a rapid-response effort in Congress and beyond. Can you help now? www.hrc.org

In the past several weeks, HRC has helped drive major victories: civil unions in Hawaii and Illinois; unprecedented progress on marriage equality in Maryland, Rhode Island, and New York; and President Obama’s decision on DOMA. All of those phone calls, rallies, letters to Congress, meetings with lawmakers – they’re working.

But these victories have pushed our opponents to redouble their efforts to undermine equality.  www.hrc.org

So we’re at a crossroads. We can catapult off of these recent victories and others in Illinois and Hawaii, grab this momentum with both hands and lay a foundation now for a future of full marriage equality – or we can let the extreme right wing dictate America‘s political agenda.

Right-wing radicals know the tide is turning against them. It’s just making them more desperate. Only your generous grassroots support will help us stand strong. We must seize this moment. Are you with us    www.hrc.org

Thank you for helping us win – and for keeping this movement stro ng.

Best,

Joe Solmonese