WASHINGTON – What amateurs politicians are today. It almost takes the fun out of laughing at them. When Rep. Eric Cantor walked out of budget talks this past week he said it was because “There is not support in the House for a tax increase, and I don’t believe now is the time to raise taxes in light of our current economic situation.” He set Democrats up perfectly:

“Cantor and Kyl just threw Boehner and McConnell under the bus. This move is an admission that there will be a need for revenues and Cantor and Kyl don’t want to be the ones to make that deal.” – unnamed Democratic aide

But this is wishful spinning, actually. It’s not about Speaker Boehner, who’s just as clueless as Cantor, it’s about Pres. Obama and 2012.

Mr. Cantor’s also not going to create an extra nightmare by alienating the Tea Partiers on some budget deal that admits we can’t do anything about the economic mess without revenues, aka raising taxes.

This mess has inspired Rep. Nancy Pelosi to demand a seat at the table, where women have been kept out.

At Blair House, the old boys club meeting has consisted of Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), U.S. Senators John Kyl (R-AZ), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Max Baucus (D-MT), Reps. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who have convened for the budget negotiations with Vice President Biden, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Budget Director Jack Lew, and economic adviser Gene Sperling. Where are the women? – National Council of Women’s Organization

In his statement Cantor also said this: I believe it is time for the President to speak clearly and resolve the tax issue. Republicans want Pres. Obama on the record saying he will raise taxes, betting that in the current climate Independents will go ballistic and bolt, though they won’t. Look at the polls on tax increases for the wealthiest; it’s not an issue.

If only Democrats hadn’t caved on spending cuts calculating that by giving a little they would get a little. Worst negotiators ever, with a side of historical amnesia.

What Pres. Obama and the Democrats should do, in fact should have done last fall before Obama extended the Bush tax cuts he said he wouldn’t as a candidate, is make the case for revenue through tax increases, starting with the mil-billionaire class, though it’s not the only thing needed, as I’ve written many times before. The model is Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s Fairness in Taxation Act: $1-10 million: 45%; $10-20 million: 46%; $20-100 million: 47%; $100 million to $1 billion: 48%; $1 billion and over: 49%.

From TPMDC:

“The message Republicans sent was…unless we accept their lopsided approach…they’re prepared to tank the economy,” Van Hollen said. Democrats, Schumer noted, had agreed to extensive spending cuts painful to their interests, but “when it comes time to talk about things that are painful to them, they walk away.”

What Obama and Democrats don’t remember about Ronald Reagan’s shenanigans could fill a fairway.

Segue to that radical Reagan and Bush senior adviser, Bruce Bartlett, who’ll drive the message home.

[…] Over the next few years, Reagan came under the influence of Rep. Jack Kemp (R-NY), Wall Street Journal editorial writer Jude Wanniski, economist Arthur Laffer and other proponents of “supply-side economics.” While skeptical at first, in 1979 Reagan endorsed the Kemp-Roth tax bill, which would have cut statutory income tax rates by about 30 percent across the board. After winning the White House in 1980, Reagan sent the Kemp-Roth proposal to Congress and it was enacted in August 1981. Almost immediately upon enactment of the 1981 tax cut, Reagan came under enormous pressure to do something about the federal budget deficit. While his preferred approach was to cut spending as much as necessary, it was not politically possible to so. His aides began pressuring him to support a tax increase. Conservative activists were appalled that Reagan would even consider such a thing, but he eventually endorsed the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982. According to a Treasury Department analysis, it raised taxes by close to one percent of GDP, equivalent to $150 billion per year today, and was probably the largest peacetime tax increase in American history.[11] This was just the first of many tax increases that President Reagan endorsed and signed into law. There were 11 major tax increases during his administration. And this doesn’t count the fact that Reagan intentionally delayed the start of tax indexing, which was part of the 1981 tax bill, until 1985 so as to capture a lot of anticipated bracket-creep for the Treasury. In fact, it was the failure of inflation to come in as fast as White House economists expected that created much of the deficit problem. I estimate that lower than expected inflation and the loss of bracket creep was responsible for about half the budget deficit in 1981 and 1982.[12] It’s also worth noting that the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which was revenue-neutral in the long run, was a fairly substantial revenue-raiser its first year, increasing taxes by $18.6 billion or 0.41 percent of GDP.[13]… Reagan’s Forgotten Tax Record, by Bruce Bartlett

Mr. Reagan’s tax revenue philosophy was launched in California and stayed with him his entire political career.

“No amount of budget reductions, even if they had been politically palatable, could have balanced California’s budget in 1967. The cornerstone of Governor Reagan’s economic program was not the ballyhooed budget reductions but a sweeping tax package four times larger than the previous record California tax increase obtained by Governor Brown in 1959. Reagan’s proposal had the distinction of being the largest tax hike ever proposed by any governor in the history of the United States.”[1] (source: Bruce Bartlett)

Former Pres. Reagan is the political cult figure on the Right, but on the tax revenue side, he makes today’s politicians not only look like pikers, but the political amateurs they are, with Republicans today having complete amnesia about what he actually did as president.

Taylor Marsh is a Washington based political analyst, writer and commentator on national politics, foreign policy, and women in power. A veteran national politics writer, Taylor’s been writing on the web since 1996. She has reported from the White House, been profiled in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and has been seen on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic, as well as on radio across the dial and on satellite, including the BBC. Marsh lives in the Washington, D.C. area. This column is cross posted from her blog.