Eric Cantor: Idiot of the Day

By LindaBeth

NPR's Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep had a brief interview with House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-PA) Wednesday morning.

From my own transcription of one exchange (audio here):

Cantor: "[...] it was an opposition based on an alternative we had put forward that frankly House Democrats refused to incorporate into the actual spending plan that emerged."

[...]

Inskeep: "Would you encourage governors to take the stimulus money even though some Republican governors have said they might not take some?"

Cantor: "Steve, what I think is that this stimulus bill is designed to preserve, protect, and create jobs. If governors are going to access the money, they money should not go into new programs that have nothing to do with jobs [...] What I say is the stimulus should be about preserving, protecting, and creating jobs."

1) The Republicans' proposal was almost entirely tax cuts. The House passed a bill with a significant proportion of tax cuts. So how exactly were Republican ideas not incorporated?

2) Cantor says that the stimulus bill is designed for creating jobs.

2a) And how exactly do individual tax cuts create jobs?

2b) I thought the bill was for stimulus, and creating jobs are a significant part of stimulus when there is no demand, but jobs is not the only part of stimulus. This is why food stamps, unemployment benefits, and certain tax cuts to those who will spend it are indeed part of stimulus.

So no, Cantor, this is not just a jobs bill. It's a stimulus bill. If it were a jobs bill, the individual tax cuts you used as a soap box would have no place in it. But I guess now you have to describe it that way in order to justify the governors who don't want to use the money for unemployment benefits and social services. Even though those are in fact stimulative--what the bill was actually for.