House Majority Leader Eric Cantor toured Google’s campus here Tuesday, meeting with company executives and getting a ride in Google’s famous driverless car.

“It is pretty extraordinary,” the Virginia Republican told POLITICO. “I saw what tech can do to expand the imagination and redefine what a car means.”

Cantor visited Google and other tech firms in advance of President Barack Obama’s expected Thursday signing of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, which reduces securities regulations on startups and young companies as they seek easier access to capital. Cantor steered the bill through the House, which overwhelmingly voted to pass it.

Cantor met with Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Kent Walker, the company’s general counsel. He also met with executives at Google’s venture arm, Google Ventures, and some of the entrepreneurs Google Ventures has supported.

In an interview after the meetings, Cantor said that he discussed the JOBS Act and other ways to help entrepreneurs. Talking to founders of startups, he said, was “validation” of the JOBS Act. But more needs to be done.

“Washington has a problem embracing a sense of risk taking,” Cantor said. People he spoke to on his trip to Silicon Valley “made it loud and clear that Washington is making it more difficult for startups to succeed.”

Cantor outlined other things lawmakers could do to help what he called “innovation industry,” policy areas such as highly skilled immigration visas, better access to capital, patent rights and protection of intellectual property.

Susan Molinari, Google’s vice president of public policy, said in a statement, “We are excited that Majority Leader Cantor could make the time to stop by the Googleplex and learn more about our products.”

As for the driverless car ride — Cantor reported he felt safe as a passenger.

MILLER: Cantor’s small-business drive
House leader wants tax and regulatory relief to turbocharge economy
By Emily Miller
The Washington Times
Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Small business has taken a beating in this brutal economy. Combine the developed world’s highest corporate tax rate with the constant stream of new regulation flowing from the Obama administration, and it’s no wonder the economy is stalled. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor wants to provide some relief so the backbone of our economy can start hiring and investing again.

“It’s really important that we get serious about job growth in this country, and helping small business is the number one way to do that,” Mr. Cantor told The Washington Times in an interview. The Virginia Republican is drafting legislation that would allow companies with 500 or fewer employees to take a deduction equal to 20 percent of their income before paying the standard tax rates on the remainder. The deduction would also be available to firms that file as individuals, as most small companies do. Mr. Cantor is planning a floor vote near Tax Day.

This relief measure contrasts sharply with President Obama’s call to hike rates on those who make over $200,000 so he can pile on the spending. “The president has consistently taken a position that he wants to increase taxes on small business people. And we know the numbers – 50 percent of those impacted by his proposal for higher taxes are small-business people,” Mr. Cantor said. “If we want to create jobs, we shouldn’t be taxing small-business men and women, we should be helping them.”

With tax rates set to go up at the end of the year, uncertainty over tax bills and regulations has stalled small-business decisions. According to a recent Gallup poll, only 1 in 5 small-business owners plans to add employees this year. Worse, of the few who plan to hire, an overwhelming 72 percent will only add temporary or part-time positions. When businessmen anticipate their tax liability is going to go up, they start stockpiling cash to pay the Internal Revenue Service instead expanding.

In the coming weeks, Mr. Cantor will also bring to the floor a package of bills easing access to capital for startups. Thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley red tape, the cost of a company going public has shot up to $2.5 million – beyond the reach of many small businesses.

The House bill includes a measure to provide an “IPO on-ramp” by easing Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulatory requirements for five years or unless the company is worth $1 billion. It would also lift SEC restrictions against small business use of “crowdfunding,” which refers to raising capital from a large pool of small investors. Though Mr. Obama and House Democrats support the measures, the Senate has failed to act.

Mr. Cantor said he’s hopeful that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, will schedule a vote in the upper chamber for both bills. “It’s up to Harry Reid whether he’s going to be an obstructionist or actually join the bipartisan effort to help small businesses,” said the House leader. To help create jobs and boost all our finances, any tax and regulation barriers stalling small-business growth must be removed.

Emily Miller is a senior editor for the Opinion pages at The Washington Times. Read the original article here.

House Majority Whip Eric Cantor sat for a profile with “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl last week. It was a mostly constructive exchange except for a minor flap over President Reagan’s record on taxes. When Stahl claimed that Reagan “raised taxes and it was one of his principles not to raise taxes,” Cantor’s press secretary interrupted the interview, asserting, “That just isn’t true. And I don’t want to let that stand.” Stahl then reported, “There seemed to be some difficulty accepting the fact that, even though Ronald Reagan cut taxes, he also pushed through several tax increases, including one in 1982 during a recession.”

Stahl’s second statement is indeed true. President Reagan did sign legislation that raised taxes, including the 1982 budget deal he struck with congressional Democrats. But Stahl’s first statement, as Cantor’s press secretary may have been trying to point out, is not true. Reagan, like all conservatives, hated raising any taxes at any level of government. But he also believed that not all taxes are created equal. As Reagan historian Steven Hayward once explained, “Reagan was stalwart on protecting low tax rates in income and investment that drive economic growth, less so on excise taxes and the business tax code that is the plaything of special interest.”

Reagan’s record backs Hayward’s description up. The 1982 tax hike that Stahl referred came on the heels of a 1981 tax cut that was twice as big as Reagan first proposed. All the 1982 tax hike did is raise some excise taxes and get rid of some tax loopholes created in 1981 that Reagan had never wanted in the first place. And Reagan only agreed to those tax hikes on the express agreement from House Speaker Tip O’Neill that congressional Democrats would then cut federal spending by $3 for every $1 raised in taxes. Those spending cuts never happened, prompting Reagan to later say “I’m still waiting for those spending cuts.” He viewed the 1982 budget deal was one of the biggest mistakes of his career.

Reagan later acceded to a hike in the gasoline tax in 1982, and a change in how employer-paid health insurance plans were tax deductible in 1985. Then in 1986, Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which raised revenue by closing multiple loopholes in the federal tax code and massively lowered marginal tax rates for all taxpayers. When Reagan came into office, the United States had 15 separate tax brackets and a top marginal rate of 50 percent. When Reagan left office, there were only two brackets and the top marginal rate was just 28 percent. Today, President Obama and congressional Democrats want to take us in the opposite direction. At every turn this year, they have proposed higher marginal rates and/or new tax brackets. So Cantor was exactly right to invoke Reagan as an inspiration in the House Republicans fight against higher marginal tax rates.

President Obama and Democrats are making great hay of the Occupy Wall Street protests, using the movement to highlight their own class-warfare themes. Now House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is pushing back, in the process providing Republicans with one way to reframe the debate.

In two speeches — one last week at the Kellogg School at Northwestern, and one this week at the University of Michigan — Mr. Cantor directly addressed the “frustration” felt by so many Americans about today’s economic situation. But rather than lay this frustration down to income inequality — the mantra of OWS and the left — Mr. Cantor put it down to the lack of economic “opportunity.” Government has helped to stifle that opportunity by punishing and demonizing the nation’s risk-takers and innovators. That’s one reason Americans feel less confident about the future.

Without mentioning Mr. Obama by name, Mr. Cantor took direct aim at the president’s language. “There are politicians and others who want to demonize people that have earned success in certain sectors of our society. They claim that these people have now made enough, and haven’t paid their fair share,” said Mr. Cantor, using one of the president’s favorite (fair share) lines. What Washington’s elected leaders ought to be doing is making sure everyone in the country has a “fair shot” and the “opportunity to earn success up the ladder.” The Democratic philosophy involves “trying to push those at the top down,” to use “wealth redistribution” to resettle everyone at “the middle of the ladder.”

The better option, said Mr. Cantor, is a society in which “everyone is moving up,” in which the “solution to income disparity is increased income mobility.” That requires a flourishing business environment in which “risk takers and innovators” are rewarded — not demonized — as well as one in which Americans once again feel confident that those “who abuse the rules are punished.”

This is as clear an enunciation of differing philosophies as it gets, and one that other Congressional Republicans — and GOP presidential candidates — might want to study. Mr. Cantor was greeted at both schools by small phalanxes of protesters, who jeered him as the “top 1%.” But the majority leader’s speech — which was quite personal, and drew on his own family history — seemed to resonate with many of the business-school students in attendance. The real merit of Mr. Cantor’s speech was that it was one of optimism and aspiration, a message that always plays far better with the American public than class warfare and anger.

Across the rotunda, sen. Harry Reid, a 71-year-old Democrat, is grumbling about Rep. Eric Cantor, the House majority leader. The previous evening, Cantor, a boyish Virginia Republican, flustered President Obama during debt-limit negotiations at the White House. Reid repays this horror with a tongue-lashing, calling Cantor “childish” from the floor.

Cantor, relaxing in his Capitol office, shrugs when he hears about Reid’s remark. Days before, he reminds me, Reid had taken him aside and thanked him for his blunt answers during the high-stakes talks. Now, in the late-July heat, Reid has apparently forgotten, tagging Cantor as the Beltway’s bête noire.

For Democrats, casting Cantor as this decade’s Newt Gingrich – a right-wing threat to reasonableness – became a favorite pastime in the midst of the debt-ceiling debate.

President Obama, more than most, has found Cantor irritating.

Continue reading “A visit with Rep. Eric Cantor” >>

The people have spoken. And everyone in Washington — even an empowered Republican Party prepared to hold sway in the House of Representatives next year — is listening.

That was the message sent back to voters yesterday by the GOP leadership — namely Rep. Eric Cantor, R-7th, who formally announced he will seek to become House majority leader and issued a 20-page treatise on governing going forward.

“Last night’s election, I think, was a clear message for people in this country that they want a government that will listen to them,” Cantor, now the House minority whip, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch during an interview in his office at the U.S. Capitol.

“Our party’s been given a second chance,” said Cantor, a Henrico County resident first elected to Congress in 2000.

“We’ve got a golden opportunity to deliver on the promise that people thought the Republican Party was about. And that is to return to fiscal discipline, to the notion of free markets,” he said.

“Smarter regulation, not necessarily more regulation. It starts with cutting spending. That’s how you reduce the reign and reach of government.”

It was a great Election Day for Cantor and Republicans, who took the House majority with a net gain of 60-plus seats; picked up at least six U.S. Senate seats; and posted gains in contests for governor.

But there was no gloating to be found in the halls of Congress, which virtually were empty because of the midterm election break.

Rather, Cantor and Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio, the minority leader who is poised to become speaker of the House, struck a sober tone in post-election speeches and press availability yesterday.

“We appreciate the trust the American people have placed in us,” Boehner said during a photo opportunity with Cantor in Boehner’s office. “Our job is to listen to the American people and follow the will of the American people.

“It’s pretty clear the American people want us to do something about cutting spending here in Washington and helping to create an environment that will get jobs back in our country,” he said.

“We’ve got a big job ahead of us, and that’s why you’ll see us roll up our sleeves and go to work today.”

President Barack Obama called Boehner on Tuesday night.

But yesterday, Cantor and Boehner made it clear that an emboldened GOP has no intention of backing off its opposition to Obama’s agenda. Rather, they said, it is the president and Democrats who will have to bend toward Republican will.

“It’s pretty clear the Obama-Pelosi agenda is being rejected by the American people,” said Boehner, who called the Obama administration’s health-care overhaul “a monstrosity.”

“They want the president to change course. And I think change course, we will.”

Cantor said efforts to work with the administration have been “a one-way street.”

“The president continued to say for the last two years of his term that elections have consequences,” Cantor said. “What we feel now is the people have spoken loudly. So it’s time for the president and his team to reassess.”

To Cantor, that reassessment will include no new taxes and a promise to cut spending and the size of government to pre-Obama levels.

Being in the majority will give the GOP leverage to use the appropriations process and congressional oversight powers to effect changes.

“I also think we can expect to see a repeal bill on Obamacare come very quickly once we are in the majority,” said Cantor, who called the health-care overhaul “chock full of job-killing measures.”

Finally, Cantor said he expects that the large incoming freshman class of lawmakers — including at least three new GOP congressmen from Virginia — will facilitate the culture change that voters demanded at the polls Tuesday.

“You don’t want people coming here just to bring pork back to their districts,” he said.

“This is about people trying to cut federal spending, change the focus from growing government, from this alleged role of having the government fix all our problems — and instead go after the idea of what America is all about,” he added.

“And that’s what I think you’re going to have reflected in this new class.”

Many months ago, as indications of a Republican sweep in 2010 first materialized, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-7th) suggested that opposition to the administration’s statist agenda would translate into significant GOP gains. In a conversation with the Editorial Board, he added that if his party was to govern effectively it would need to offer a coherent program to the American people. The publication of Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders does much of that. In the book, Cantor (whose wife Diana serves on the board of Media General, the newspaper’s corporate parent) joins fellow GOP Reps. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Kevin McCarthy of California in outlining a Republican vision.

Cantor opens with a critique of the Obama presidency and congressional Democrats — and of his own party’s performance during its years of legislative ascendancy. He knew his side had lost its way, he explains, when Parade magazine reported the news about “the bridge to nowhere.” He laments a trend that saw the idealism of 1994′s Contract with America perverted by politics as usual. Disenchantment with Republicans generally and, we note, with the war in Iraq specifically, contributed to Democratic landslides in 2006 and 2008.

Young Guns offers a “better way.” Rather than trying to stimulate the economy with massive and haphazard federal interventions, Cantor and his colleagues would rely on the essential strengths of free markets, and on the entrepreneurial spirit and expertise of the citizenry. Government cannot disappear but it can smoothe the way. Its policies should promote the creation of wealth, not the confiscation of it. Although most of Young Guns’ content asserts attainable goals, Ryan’s ideas regarding Social Security will not help the cause, alas.

And despite the challenge posed by a recession that originated with a Republican in the White House, national security remains the federal government’s principal obligation. Cantor and Co. do not omit this. Indeed, Young Guns implicitly adapts Ronald Reagan’s combination of realism and vision to global circumstances that have changed since the end of the Cold War.

Young Guns is more oriented toward policy than was the 1994 contract. Yet although its recommendations reflect a philosophical perspective, the book does not resemble Barry Goldwater’s The Conscience of a Conservative, which more vigorously engaged the intellect. Young Guns offers immediacy and serves as a practical guide not only to campaigning but to governing. It tells voters what they need to know. Mainstream Republicans and much of the Tea Party will like its direction. True independents will find the overall prospectus congenial. The left will sneer.

The cover depicts three appealing fellows, whose backgrounds reveal differences in religion, regional culture, ethnicity, and other influences. The success of their endeavor will be apparent if future editions portray not only three white guys in suits but the rainbow this country has wonderfully become.

At Henrico’s Deep Run High School, there was a competition that attracted a big crowd. But it’s not a sporting event, nor is it anything one might call entertaining.

The competition was for a paycheck, and way of life. More than 3,000 people packed a job fair knowing full well that they outnumber the positions available.

Way in the back of a line that seems impossibly long is Amy Harmon, who worked for Circuit City until it went under.

“There’s a lot of folks that need jobs, and that are willing to come on out and look for jobs,” Harmon said.

Amy and everyone else lined up very early for the chance at just a few seconds of face time with potential employers.

“I was expecting this, ’cause no one has jobs, and it’s starting to hit this economy real bad in Virginia,” said job seeker Michael Jones.

The job fair, hosted by Rep. Eric Cantor (R, Henrico), comes at a critical time.

“When you have over 100 people in line an hour and a half before the doors open, I think indicates a real need to bring job seekers and employers together,” Cantor said.

The Richmond-area unemployment rate is inching upward, slightly, to 7.6 percent, and the region’s public employment center in Henrico is preparing for millions less in federal stimulus aid.

“Government spending money doesn’t create jobs. This jobs fair is trying to match up people looking for employment to be hired,” Cantor said.

Cantor’s involvement, though, was criticized by Democrats, who pointed out that some of the industries on display benefited from stimulus money. But on this day, politics took a back seat to reality.

“I need work. Just like everybody else. There are a lot of people that need work,” said job seeker Gordon Bengtson.

That’s why so many say it’s worth it to wait in line, and imagine the first step toward a new career.

“I just have as much chance as the next person, so I’m good,” said job seeker Janet Johnson.

The job fair, which included a police presence and refreshments, was paid for with taxpayer dollars. A Cantor spokesperson was not immediately able to confirm what was spent.