Rep. Eric Cantor is a mendacious, obfuscating jerk.

Not news. Still, it's amazing to watch the linguistic contortions here as he tries to evade acknowledging that extending the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy continues to worsen the deficit. Quite genuinely, at this point Republicans are having to defend their policies by denying basic math.

Savannah Guthrie: Well, well, look, I mean, Democrats may not want to do spending cuts, and Republicans don't want to touch taxes; would you acknowledge, though, it may be a policy judgment you have made—but will you just simply acknowledge that passing these tax cuts worsens the budget deficit problem? I mean, you can't deny that, right?

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA): Savannah, Savannah, let's look at it through the prism of the working families who are seeking jobs and the small businesspeople who are creating them. It's not—it's not a tax cut they're looking for, they don't want a tax hike.

Guthrie: But that wasn't my question.

Cantor: And that's the situation—the prism, the prism through which these people are looking at it. I mean, come on now, you can't hike their taxes and expect them to create jobs.

Guthrie: Right. Yeah, we get that. I just—I just was wondering if you had a—if you had any dispute with the notion that it does exacerbate the deficit picture.

Cantor: What I—what I said in the beginning is, um, if you have less revenues coming into the federal government, and more expenditures, what does that add up to? Certainly you're gonna dig the hole deeper. But you also have to understand, if the priority is to get people back to work, is to start growing this economy again, uh, then you don't want to make it more expensive for job creators. You don't wanna hike their taxes so that they won't hire people. I mean, that's the fundamental, uh, decision here. Do you wanna make it more expensive for small businesspeople right now, and no, I don't think you do.