Dems Threaten to Flush the Economy if They Don't Get Massive Tax Hikes

Go ahead, pull the handle:

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer threatened Tuesday to withhold Democratic votes on a debt-ceiling deal if Republicans don’t make concessions on taxes.

“I think if what the Republicans do is to try to hold hostage the creditworthiness of the United States of America so that they can slash programs that are critically important to the American people and to stabilizing and growing the economy, the answer to that is, they ought not to expect us to support that,” Hoyer told reporters.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is expected to need Democratic support to push a debt ceiling package over the finish line – much as he did in April with the continuing resolution to avert a government shutdown.

But House Republican leaders have insisted that they won’t accept tax increases as part of this deal.

As someone pointed out on Twitter John Boehner was first elected in 1990 and was in Congress for the tax "deal" that basically cost George H.W. Bush his presidency. After promising "read my lips, no new taxes" at the GOP convention in 1988, Bush was fooled by Dems into an agreement to raise taxes in exchange for tax reform and spending cuts that never happened. The Dems then used the tax hikes against Bush in the 1992 campaign.

Boehner knows how badly that deal played with the base and I hope he's smart enough not to repeat the mistakes of the past.