GOP Leaders Ready Agenda

Republicans are starting to hammer out the details of their Pledge to America, and they include massive budget cuts, an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, and strict limits on government regulation. In an attempt to slash spending, Republicans have compiled a huge bundle of cuts that would shrink most domestic agency budgets by 20 percent, the largest one-year reduction since the military drawdown after World War II. Only the military would be exempt. Other Republicans want even deeper cuts and an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts in exchange for their vote to raise the national debt limit in January. Rep. Eric Cantor even came out against tax breaks intended to spur hiring, saying of Obama’s proposal to let businesses deduct their expenses more quickly: “Trying to prod business to do what Washington wants is not what is needed. We need to rein in this desire of Washington to tell business how to grow.”