Republican Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia didn't appreciate 'the kind of rhetoric and lecturing that occurred in the State of the Union.' | John Shinkle/POLITICO Cantor rejects Obama's 'lecturing'

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor says he hopes President Barack Obama will avoid during a visit Friday to a House GOP retreat in Baltimore “the kind of rhetoric and lecturing that occurred in the State of the Union.”

Obama told Republicans in his address Wednesday night that “saying ‘no’ to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership” and that they share in “the responsibility to govern.” Stepping up his own efforts at bipartisanship, he said he plans “monthly meetings with both Democratic and Republican leadership.”


Cantor, the No. 2 House GOP leader, said he “appreciated his offer” but said Obama has made calls for bipartisanship before.

“There are words and promises, and there is delivery,” Cantor, 46, said at his Capitol Hill office in an interview for a POLITICO video series, “Inside Obama’s Washington.” “There’s not been much action put behind those words over the last year. I’m hoping when he comes to our retreat that we’ll hear a different President Obama and, frankly, a willingness to say, ‘OK, I understand my agenda may not be what the majority of this country wants. Let’s work together.’”

Republicans unanimously opposed last year’s stimulus bill, which Cantor argues has “failed miserably” at job creation. Now, he says House Republicans will oppose the new jobs bill Obama endorsed in Wednesday night’s speech.

“We’ve already seen his method and the majority’s method of trying to generate jobs — that’s the stimulus bill that was passed last year,” Cantor said. “Now we know the total is exceeding $800 billion. Now the proposal is yet again another $150 billion before we start to think about a freeze. But $150 billion spent on more government programs? ... Come on. There is a government that can help, and the government can also hurt.”

Cantor claimed that the administration “has demonstrated an arrogance in ignoring public opinion.”

“I felt like he was admonishing Congress and certainly lecturing Republicans,” Cantor said, “accusing us of being an obstructionist party, when what it is we’re about is trying to focus on the issue, which is control the spending and let’s go about creating an environment for jobs. ... [The] president says he’s going to be open to discussion. We’re all about going and participating with him.”

Cantor said congressional Democratic leaders are no better. “When they came back to Washington [after the Massachusetts Senate loss], there were a lot of cries publicly, ‘Oh, we need to work together,’” he said. “Not one call from any Democratic leader. Not one visit by any Democratic leader in the House to any of the Republican leaders.”

Continuing his critique of the speech, Cantor said: “There was a lot of blame game last night, and I’m the first one to say there’s a lot of blame to go around. We can all accept some of it. But, as we’ve seen over the last several months, the people in this country are very dissatisfied with the direction that this administration is taking this country. And what we heard last night ... was: ‘We’re going to continue with this agenda. In fact, we’re going to double-down on health care.’ ”

Cantor said that while hosting Obama, Republicans will “remind him again: We’re not voting ‘no’ for political expediency — we’ve got our principles, and we’re going to stand up and defend those.”

In small meetings, according to Cantor, Obama is “an affable person” and “somebody who is engaging, who has a clear, I think, ability to engage in intellectual discussion — there’s no doubt about that.”

“But my difficulty is in the disconnect with what he is proposing with what’s going on out there,” Cantor said.

Cantor criticized Obama for last year’s “outsourcing of the legislative activity from the White House to Nancy Pelosi here in this House,” which he said has resulted in “a bill shift and an agenda shift way to the left and outside the mainstream of this country.”

The plan by House Democratic leaders to engineer a series of symbolic votes taking banks and Wall Street to task “smells a lot like politics — not governing, and not leadership,” he said.

“If they want, as the president did last night, to continue to vilify business, to continue to vilify banks, then that will be their course,” Cantor added. “But it is inconsistent to say, ‘We want to help small businesses. We want to help them access credit. And, oh, by the way, we’re going to tax the banks.’ I mean, it just doesn’t make sense. ... The kind of rhetoric and lecturing that occurred in the State of the Union last night didn’t provide that leadership and instead veered towards politics.”

House Republicans would need to gain 40 seats in November’s midterm elections to regain the majority — an outcome that looks like a long shot, but less impossible with each passing day. Cantor, a founder of House Republican “Young Guns” (members under 45), has been working hard to recruit candidates and said “chances are pretty darn good that we’re going to net 40 seats-plus.”

“I say that because the agenda from this administration doesn’t seem to be changing,” he said. “The president doubled- or tripled-down on some of that last night. And that’s where the voters’ ire came out in the elections we saw in Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey.”

Asked the first action his caucus would take if it regained the majority, Cantor replied, “I think that we’re going to have to talk about jobs.”

“We could stand up and make sure that money is not being spent the way that it is being spent now,” he said. “We can also then work to make sure that some of the health care issues that we want to see carried through are done. Certainly, we’ll have a much bigger seat at the table with this White House.

“We would use that seat at the table to try and bring the discussion back towards the middle, back towards focusing on small businesses, saying we’re not going to raise any taxes in times of unemployment, saying that we’re going — you know what, we’re going to bring these trade bills up because it means 250,000 jobs. ‘C’mon, Mr. President. You said you want to do everything we can to create jobs. We’ll do that.’ ... We have the ability to bring the agenda forward in the House when we reclaim the majority. I think the public would be there watching and listening, and yes, I think the president will listen.”

Cantor said Republicans “have learned the lessons of the mistakes that we had made while in the majority in this House [until after the election of 2006] and are committed to fiscal discipline” and “a zero-tolerance on any unethical behavior.”

“I think we are ready and will be ready to govern,” he said. “The public is in desperate need of a check and balance on this one-party rule in this town.”