Main Street

Wait, What? Cantor Repackages His Tired Agenda as a Solution to Inequality

As the old saying goes, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And to Eric Cantor, everything looks like an opportunity to shovel more money to the very wealthiest.

After referring to the Occupy Wall Street protestors as “mobs,” Rep. Cantor, a Virginia Republican, is trying to shake off his well-deserved reputation as the smug, shameless defender of the corporate-money agenda by giving a talk on economic inequality this Friday. The second-highest-ranking House Republican must be feeling some heat, because saying we need to “take care of the income disparity in this country” is not exactly in Cantor’s standard talking-point arsenal.

Cantor’s showy display of concern is a sign that the Occupy Wall Street protests are changing our national political conversation for the better. The message is getting out there even as the typical array of right-wing political strategists, well-connected business reporters and corporate-funded think tanks are desperately trying to dismiss, demonize or neutralize the protests.

So what does Cantor have to offer as a solution to the very real problem of economic inequality? Surprise! It’s exactly what Eric Cantor was offering last week, the week before and the week before that. It’s more tax cuts to corporations and the very wealthy, more rollbacks of regulations that protect workers and consumers, and more slashing of services and support systems that people hit by the recession really need. In particular, Cantor and his allies are looking to eliminate even the modest, insufficient regulations we currently have on Wall Street and the big banks who caused the financial crisis. If Cantor were capable of embarrassment, he might be hesitant to advance a “jobs plan” that doesn’t create jobs.

Cantor claims that his agenda is going to promote economic growth because it “gives private enterprise a chance to grow.” But the problem facing our economy isn’t that businesses are insufficiently profitable or insufficiently flush with cash to create jobs. It’s that high unemployment, lost wealthy and stagnant incomes are holding back demand. There is zero wrong with our economy that can be fixed by directing more money towards the companies who are failing to create jobs despite sitting on trillions in cash. Cantor’s economic prescription is based on wishful thinking.

In addition to being wrong, Cantor’s argument here is just plain lazy. Low taxes on the very wealthiest, light or nonexistent regulation of big businesses and reduced services are what politicians like Cantor always offer, regardless of the circumstances. And they’re what we’ve tried already—after all, the grim job and income record of the Bush administration came at a time when Cantor and his party controlled the levers of policy. It only “worked” to create economic growth for a tiny sliver of the very wealthiest, which may be the only kind of economic growth that actually matters to Cantor.

You can thank the Occupy Wall Street protestors for changing our national conversation so much that even Eric Cantor feels he has to show he cares about inequality. But he’ll have to try a lot harder to actually propose solutions that are anything more than reheated leftovers of the failed policies of the past decade.

Tags: Corporate Accountability, Eric Cantor, taxes, Wall Street