House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is quietly working both sides of the Capitol to build support for a plan to scale back automatic spending cuts and combine the proposal with a wide range of critical year-end tax and spending measures.
What it amounts to is a major year-end pitch: Democrats and President Barack Obama would get their much sought-after payroll tax cut extension and jobless benefits, while Republicans would tweak the Pentagon cuts that defense hawks hate.
Continue ReadingThe White House has already sent out a warning against messing with these so-called trigger spending cuts born out of the deficit supercommittee?s failure, so it?s far from clear that Cantor?s maneuvering could win enough support on Capitol Hill.
Cantor has spoken to senators from both parties ? including a Thanksgiving morning phone call to the Stamford, Conn., home of Sen. Joe Lieberman ? as he gauges support for a potential package that would include up to $133 billion in spending cuts in exchange for delaying the first year of slashes to defense and nondefense programs slated to begin in 2013. That package could also include a reform and a yearlong extension of jobless benefits, a payroll tax break and the Medicare reimbursement rate for physicians.
Cantor has also reached out to the likes of Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Brad Dayspring, Cantor?s spokesman, said Cantor ?continues to talk to House and Senate members from both sides of the aisle in an effort find common ground on these important issues.?
Adding provisions overhauling the automatic cuts would be one of the more controversial ideas in a year-end package. And it could cause friction with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who is not in favor of touching the automatic cuts until next year.
It?s far from clear whether Cantor?s approach will gain steam in the final month of the year, given Obama?s veto threat.
But Pentagon advocates on Capitol Hill are starting to pressure Republican leaders to take a tougher line when demanding changes to the automatic cuts ? and some believe changing the triggered cuts could be a key bargaining chip in the messy year-end rush of legislating.
Other Republican leaders are taking a wait-and-see approach.
?I would say we are certainly not going to reduce spending any less ? but there is a lot of interest in considering next year a way to reallocate the spending reductions,? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told POLITICO on Wednesday. ?But we?re certainly opposed to reducing spending any less than $2.1 trillion that is included in the Budget Control Act.?
Asked if such changes could be done this year, McConnell smiled and shrugged, saying, ?I don?t know.?
world series of poker joe walsh zsa zsa gabor heavy d dead heavy d dead alaska weather alaska weather
FORTUNE -- The Occupy Wall Street movement has brought a new focus to an issue that many Americans have long seen as a problem: The growing gap between the haves and have nots. The nation's richest households are getting richer while everyone else seems to languish behind. There's obviously something wrong with that. But while it's easy to blame corporate greed and the evil banks, it might make more sense to look at what's happening to the jobs that once supported America's growing middle class. They're shrinking. Fast.
