Cantor to GOP: Quit whining and vote

[240 is Back]

 Source: Politico


House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) delivered a blunt message to the Republican Conference Tuesday morning: Quit the “grumbling” and “whining” and come together to rally behind Speaker John Boehner to pass his debt ceiling plan.

Cantor’s heavy rhetoric came out in a closed session at the Capitol Hill Club as the GOP majority tried to whip up support for Boehner’s latest deficit package. Cantor summed up what he knew many Republicans were thinking as they head into another critical vote.

“The debt limit vote sucks,” he said, according to an attendee of the closed meeting. But Republicans have three options, Cantor said: risk default, pass Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) plan — which he thinks gives President Barack Obama a blank check — or “call the president’s bluff” by passing the Boehner plan, which not only cuts deeply into domestic spending but calls for a bipartisan commission to find more savings.

Cantor also announced that the House will hold a vote on a balanced budget amendment Thursday, a nod to vocal conservatives in the conference.


 

[240 is Back]

Boehner Plan Faces G.O.P. Resistance and Veto Threat
 Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders Tuesday made increasingly frenzied pleas to their members to approve a plan to temporarily raise the nation’s debt ceiling, but passage seemed in growing doubt. The White House reiterated that it strongly opposed the bill and that President Obama’s advisers would recommend a veto should it somehow pass the House and Senate.