With the August 2 deadline rapidly approaching, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is reversing his view on the nation’s debt ceiling.
In an interview this week Cantor said, “Secretary Geithner feels August 2 is his deadline…I don’t question the Secretary of the Treasury other than to say we’re trying to get in place real spending reductions — trillions of dollars of spending reductions — if the president wants us to increase the credit limit of this country by trillions of dollars.”
Cantor has been denying of the severity of a default for quite some time. Less than one month ago, he said,”The markets are not fooled by some date imposed to say that that is the trigger for the collapse. I think the markets are looking to see that there is real reform.”
Treasury Secretary Geithner and members of Wall Street have been nagging officials on the importance of increasing the debt limit. These warning have mostly fallen on deaf ears in Congress.
Although this shift marks a step forward in the United States’ ability to retain its AAA credit rating, Cantor and his GOP Colleagues on the Hill continue to play with fire by tying our discussion of the debt ceiling to our discussion of deficit reduction: a political tactic criticized by the Treasury Department itself.
— By Harry Grabow
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