Rep. Cantor Struggles To Defend GOP's Refusal To Compromise

In recent weeks, GOP leaders have continually insisted that they're ready to work with President Obama if he is willing to listen to their ideas.  Last night, the president challenged the Republicans to follow through on their offer.  During his address to the nation, Obama advanced several leading conservative causes, including a spending "freeze," tax cuts, nuclear energy, and offshore drilling.

Today, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) appeared on MSNBC's Daily Rundown to discuss the speech.  In light of the aforementioned proposals, Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie pressed Cantor on whether he'll be more open to working with Obama to achieve those goals.  The short answer seems to be: "Don't count on it."

Watch as Cantor repeatedly refuses to say the GOP will make any concessions whatsoever:

Cantor's refusal to give a straightforward answer is telling. 

When asked if he would compromise on energy, Cantor lied about cap-and-trade legislation.  

When asked if he would support tax breaks to create jobs, Cantor attacked the idea of using recouped bailout funds to help small business owners.

When reminded that giving job creators more money would help them to, you know, create jobs, Cantor claimed that they don't even want the government's help because of the "red tape." 

In Republican-land, "bipartisanship" has nothing to do with compromise.  The GOP will work with Obama if and only if he fully abandons his agenda and embraces a conservative one.  Ain't gonna happen.      

Transcript:

GUTHRIE: Setting aside the differences you have, are you willing to work with [Obama] on these things that Republicans have traditionally supported.  And if not, why not?

CANTOR:  We've continuously been willing to work with him since January and the stimulus bill.  You know, I've handed him a stimulus proposal, I've handed him our Republican no-cost jobs proposal.  And for the president to say, "Oh, you know, Republicans are just voting 'no' out of political expediency" -- he knows that's not right.  I support more clean nuclear plants.  Republicans support offshore drilling.  But we don't support a cap-and-trade bill, which he then followed up after he said he was for clean coal.  There's a lot of inconsistency last night. 

TODD: But let's go here. The criticism I hear from Democrats is, okay, look, he's throwing out these things to you.  Here's your quarter loaf, half a loaf, whatever you want to call it.  But it seems that you'll only support that if what Democrats want is not in there.  Isn't at the end of the day legislating going, okay, you know what -- I'm not going to get 100% of what I want, but I'm getting this, so that's a trade-off.  I'll take some form of cap-and-trade, how you want to describe it, I'll take some form of it if I'm also getting nuclear energy and off-shore oil drilling.  Isn't that the nature of legislating?

CANTOR: I think what we missed last night is a single focus from this speech.  Where we've got to go is jobs.  The president put the words there.  He said his priority's gonna be jobs.  But you can't sort of square that with that with this proposal for cap-and-trade.  And that's the point. 

GUTHRIE: But wait a minute. We're going to do cap-and-trade separately.  Let's say there's a jobs bill.  It has these tax cuts, the tax cut for capital gains, it's got the small business breaks.  Are you prepared to support that?

CANTOR: Absolutely.  These are extensions of existing law; we've always supported that. 

GUTHRIE: So you're with him on that?

CANTOR: Absolutely.  But what we're not with him on is the expansion and creation of more government programs.  When he goes and says, "You know what - we ought to take the TARP money and we ought to tax the banks and use it to give to small business.  First of all, TARP was always something that was meant to be paid back to the tax payers.  So how is it -- we ought to refocus the debate here.  How are we going to help the job creators? That's the bottom line. 

TODD: But isn't this proposal -- I understand the issue of TARP, but isn't that proposal saying here's some money to small business so you guys can invest and create jobs...

CANTOR: The distinction here is, Chuck, over 90% of small businesses never have had an SBA loan, and most don't want it because the red tape dealing with the government.  The real problem with small business growth right now is availability of credit.  How do you square that with the president then saying we're going to tax the banks? The two are just inconsistent.