Today on MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews aired the clip of House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) admitting that extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich would “dig the hole deeper” in terms of the national deficit. With his admission, Cantor has put Republican supply-siders in the awkward position of confronting the fact that their faith-based tax cut ideology would blow an $830 billion hole in the budget. Matthews pressed Bilbray on this point, only to witness his guest stammer and sputter to avoid answering the question directly:
MATTHEWS: Well there he is, Congressman Bilbray, your leader, your whip is now admitting that if you cut taxes, you’re raising the deficit. … Why would he say something like that that runs against your orthodoxy?
BILBRAY: The fact is, look, Chris, you can’t get around the fact –
MATTHEWS: Well the fact is that he just said that. Why did he just say that cutting taxes at this point is going to yield a lower revenue and therefore a bigger deficit? What he just said what contradicts to what you just said.
BILBRAY: We’re not even talking about cutting about taxes. We’re talking about not allowing an increase –
MATTHEWS: — continuing the Bush tax cuts is what we’re talking about. And that’s what he was talking about.
BILBRAY: And that is maintaining the status quo –
MATTHEWS: — Are you in disagreement with Eric Cantor? Just tell me you disagree with him and we’ll be on the same page.
BILBRAY: I am disagreement with anybody that thinks we can get ourselves out of this mess by raising more taxes on the American people.
Watch it:
“I oppose adding even one more dollar to the national deficit – instead we need to be paying it down,” Bilbray says on his campaign website.
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