The AP doesn’t really explain the significance of the fact that the GOP is sending just House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl to the President’s much-ballyhooed deficit reduction panel, so let me do it.
When the President set up this thing in the first place, he told the four party leaders in Congress – Speaker Boehner (R) and Minority Leader Pelosi (D) in the House; Majority Leader Reid (D) and Minority Leader McConnell (R) in the Senate – to each send four Congressmen to it, for a total of sixteen. That effectively translates to “President Obama’s deficit reduction panel was intended to be ineffectual:” you generally cannot get sixteen people to agree on anything. While Congressional Democrats theoretically were taking this panel more seriously [by only sending two apiece] – well. The Senate Democratic picks are Inouye and Baucus, which as the NYT notes are both hostile to the idea of deficit talks. Pelosi picked Van Hollen and Clyburn, which are described as obedient mouthpieces for the former Speaker (who herself hates the idea of deficit reduction) by that noted right-wing shill The Huffington Post. So that’s the Democratic side.
Continue reading Cantor, Kyl, and NO OTHER REPUBLICANS to deficit panel.