Cantor Bails on Budget Talks

Eric Cantor has told reporters that he’s not attending today’s Joe Biden-led budget meeting, or any future budget meetings, because the group has reached an impasse over taxes that he thinks can only be bridged by John Boehner and President Obama. “We’ve reached the point where the dynamic needs to change,” Cantor said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “It is up to the president to come in and talk to the speaker.”

Cantor said he was still optimistic, because the Biden talks had identified $2 trillion in consensus budget talks, but said the process was stalled because Democrats insisted on some tax increases, and Republicans were dead set against them. “At each meeting, it has become a little more difficult to ignore that divide,” he said. (More Joe Biden stories.)