Cantor Can’t Name A Single GOP ‘Big Idea’ On Job Creation

THINK PROGRESS

Today, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) appeared at the Economist’s World in 2010 conference (attended by ThinkProgress), where he took exception to NBC’s David Gregory characterizing Republicans as “not really a party of ideas, because they don’t want to be.” Cantor claimed that it’s actually the media’s fault that no one hears about Republican ideas, because “it’s not as sexy of a story to cover our ideas right now.” But when the Economist’s Daniel Franklin gave Cantor an opportunity to present his big idea for job creation, Cantor couldn’t come through:

FRANKLIN: What is the big idea? “Jobs” is not an idea.

CANTOR: The big idea is to get, to get, to produce an environment where we can have job creation again. And see, that’s where the Obama administration’s agenda so clearly disadvantages the Democrats in this upcoming election in eleven months and advantages us.

Watch it:

If Cantor’s goal is “to produce an environment where we can have job creation again,” shouldn’t he have supported the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e the economic stimulus), which has boosted GDP growth and lending to small businesses, while cutting taxes for workers, thereby boosting demand? And shouldn’t he be supporting further efforts in Congress to craft a jobs bill that emphasizes infrastructure spending and lending to small businesses?

Instead, Cantor has put forth a “no-cost jobs plan” that Andrew Leonard rightly called a “magic pony jobs plan.” “Cut regulations. Freeze spending. Cut taxes. No new taxes. That’s the plan,” Leonard wrote.

Later in the discussion, Cantor replied to a question about the U.S.’s role at the climate change conference in Copenhagen by saying, “I think from the larger sense the question of climate change comes down to, if there’s been any constant in human history it’s been climate change, and the real question is the severity of that and the involvement of humans in all of that.” Watch it:

Former White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart responded, “I wouldn’t have predicted last year that scientific doubters would still have this strong a voice.”