"What Business Does"

If you haven't already heard, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been operating under temporary bills since 2007 and it partially shut down a week ago last Friday because the House GOP refused to back down from an anti-worker provision that would make it harder to unionize airlines. Since the FAA can’t collect taxes while it is shut down, airlines are enjoying a billion-dollar windfall by keeping ticket prices the same and simply pocketing the cash they’d otherwise have to turn over to the FAA.

According to Eric Cantor (R-VA-7th), "what business does" is screw people, which is fine by him!!!!

Well it's not a question of legality, it's a question of the fact that the authority, FAA, is not functioning right now so they cannot levy the tax. And what airlines have done is have stepped in and said, well, if we’re not going to pay that money to the federal government, we’re going to keep it towards our own bottom line. And I guess that’s what business does.

At ThinkProgress, Alex Seitz-Wald points out that:

Oddly, Cantor seems to be unintentionally making the progressive argument about corporate taxes here. While conservatives generally argue that cutting business tax rates will lead to companies passing on savings to consumers and hiring more employees, progressives argue that corporations will just pocket much of these savings.

This is a true example that trickle-down economy doesn't work and that politicians work for corporate America and not the working folk. Wake up GOP Tea Party folk, the problem isn't that government is too big. The problem is that corporate interests have more power over Congress than the people do. It is time to vote Cantor and his ilk, including like-minded Democrats, out of office.

The Extremes of the GOP

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) has strong opinions.

On Fox News Sunday, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) called for a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures, saying “it’s absolutely imperative that we keep people in their homes.”

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) disagreed strongly, however, saying he was “just perplexed” at Wasserman Schultz’s answer, and that “people have to take responsibility for themselves.”

CANTOR: I’m just perplexed to that answer, Bret… what we’re seeing if you do that, if you impose a moratorium on foreclosures what you are telling people and institutions that lend money is they do not have the protection to take the risk they need to, to extend credit for people will get a mortgage. You’ll shut down the housing industry if that is the case[...]

What we’re talking about, Debbie, you have 10 percent, if that, of the population who are now in a foreclosure situation or in a mortgage that they have been unable to meet the obligations… Now, come on, people have to take responsibility for themselves. We need to get the housing industry going again. We don’t need government intervening in every step of every aspect of this economy.

Watch it:

Cantor has been willing to accept many extreme positions of fellow GOP candidates, until now.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) finally revealed just how extreme a GOP candidate needs to be in order to be rejected by their party leadership. Reacting to Ohio GOP Congressional candidate Rich Iott’s membership in a Nazi reenactment group that “salute[s]” Nazi sympathizers who viewed the Third Reich as “the protector of personal freedom and their very way of life,” Cantor expressly repudiated Iott’s candidacy in an exchange with Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL):

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: You have one candidate in Ohio who actually thinks it’s a good bonding experience to reenact Nazi battles with his son. [...]

CANTOR: Now Debbie went and launched into her attacks as to some of the reports about some of the candidates that are running, particularly the one in Ohio having to do with a Nazi reenactment. She knows that I would absolutely repudiate that and do not support an individual that would do something like that.

WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ: Well you haven’t.

CANTOR: I’m doing it right here.

Watch it:

Lest there be any confusion about what positions GOP candidates are allowed to embrace, ThinkProgress is happy to provide this handy chart explaining which stances the GOP does and does not view as too extreme: