Fresh off a recent political victory in which he balanced his state’s budget and closed an $8 billion budget gap, Ohio Gov. John Kasich made the rounds on Wednesday’s morning shows to trumpet his success and dole out advice on the debt-ceiling deal.
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Kasich and host Joe Scarborough, who served in Congress together during the late 1990s, reminisced about forcing a government shutdown in 1996 that they say led to a balanced-budget deal in 1997. Though Kasich encouraged Republicans to “have courage” and lead, Kasich lamented the tactics of the current Republican Party. He encouraged them to embrace an increase in revenues through closing tax loopholes, which many have refused to consider.
“There is nothing wrong with closing these loopholes on corporate jets and things like that as part of tax reform as long as you bring this corporate [tax] rate down... but there also has to be the spending cuts,” Kasich said in an interview on Fox & Friends. He also rejected the idea of raising marginal tax rates or increasing taxes on the wealthy, an idea Obama has continually called for.
But, despite wistfully recounting the government shutdown of the 1990s, Kasich abhorred the idea of a default. “Do you default on your credit cards? I hope not,” he said on Fox. “America cannot get into a position of where we default.”
Scarborough, who often talks about his six and a half years as a congressman, said he would gladly support closing various tax loopholes if it meant securing a larger deficit-reduction deal like the one Obama is pushing.
“If I can get a $4 trillion deal, by closing loopholes -- and I'll have some people in Washington on the right say, ‘Joe supports tax increases!’ -- if I can do that, I will go down to my district and I would gladly die a thousand political deaths if I can get $4 trillion dollars instead of no deal at all.”
He was reacting to Kasich, who a moment earlier claimed to quote Winston Churchill while exhorting Republicans to lead: “You can die a thousand times in politics, only once in war.”
It’s unclear the quote actually came from Churchill, but the point was made.
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