On ABC's This Week, wingnut tea partier Rep. Allen West did his best to make his buddies the Koch Brothers proud -- Rep. Allen West Takes Debt Ceiling Hostage For Huge Corporate Tax Cut:
Republicans have, for months, been laying out various demands that they want in exchange for voting to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, even though failure to do so would have widespread and disastrous consequences. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner estimates that the country will reach its legal borrowing limit around May 16.
Calling it a “leverage moment,” some of the demands Republicans have cited are a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and various versions of spending caps or cuts. Today on ABC’s This Week, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) added one more demand to the list — cutting the corporate tax rate in half:
AMANPOUR: Congressman West, do you believe it when the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Fed, say that the stakes [regarding the debt ceiling] are this high?
WEST: Well, one of the things, having served 22 years in the United States military, I don’t believe in leadership by fear and intimidation. I think that leaders have to come up with viable solutions. I agree with one of the things [Rep.] Joe Walsh just brought up, we need to have a balanced budget amendment…But I think also, now is a great time, when we can cut our corporate business tax rate in half. Bring it from 35 percent to 20 to 22 percent because there’s a lot of capital just sitting out there that we could use to invest in long-term sustainable job growth…This is not about a debt ceiling being raised, this really comes down to a debt suggestion.
I guess most of these corporations already paying next to nothing or zero as their effective tax rates isn't quite good enough for West. I don't know about anyone else, but I think this completely irresponsible game of chicken and hostage taking by the GOP and our politicians on raising the debt ceiling is getting really old, really fast.