Tom Price

The media's preoccupation with tax hikes over spending cuts continued on Sunday's State of the Union, with CNN's Candy Crowley pitching a millionaire's tax hike while not mentioning spending cuts once.

"Senator, there has been some thought on your side as well that perhaps $250,000, that if you could get the House to go along with something, that perhaps $250,000 is too low to be raising taxes, that maybe you could make it a genuine millionaires' tax that might be more palatable. What about something like that?" Crowley pressed Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). [Video below the break. Audio here.]

On Capitol Hill today, the Media Research Center along with Americans for Tax Reform and the Health Care Freedom Coalition sponsored an event showcasing Sen. Jim DeMint, Rep. Tom Price and key health care experts who discussed the alternatives to and the pitfalls of President Obama's health care proposal. 

Sen. DeMint explained what he would have said if he had been invited by ABC to participate in this evening's health care special:

Let's award a point of light to Matt Lauer.  On this morning's Today, he called out Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) for calling for an end to the blame game . . . right after the congressman blamed John McCain for failing to rally his Arizona troops to vote for the bailout.  But that didn't stop Clyburn from continuing to try to pin the tail on the elephant.

JAMES CLYBURN: We promised 50% of our caucus; they promised 50% of their caucus, or their conference.  We produced 60%, and they produced 33%.

MATT LAUER: Yeah, but in fairness, Congressman Clyburn, the Speaker of the House couldn't even deliver half of her own Democratic delegation from her own state.

CLYBURN: Well, that may be true. But zero from Arizona voted for this, and presidential candidate McCain came in, and he said he brought everybody to the table. But if you check, Matt, you will see that not a single person from Arizona voted for this legislation.  So here is what we have to do, going forward.  I think it's time for us to set aside blaming, set aside all of this extraneous stuff, like a speech that may have been delivered on the floor of the House [alluding to Pelosi's partisan spiel]. It's amazing to me that we can be so sophomoric to believe that a politician would not give a political speech.

That prompted Lauer's pointed response.

View video here.