Rep. Eric Cantor Better Improve His Self-Esteem

Congressman Eric Cantor is serving his fifth term in the House of Representatives, recently became the minority whip, and holds an important seat on the House Weighs and Means Committee. Which is all very impressive, but means just one thing to Imus: "This is the guy to get my Vicodin from!"

Cantor was humored by TIME Magazine selecting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as its Person of the Year, a distinction everybody makes a big deal about now and then forgets by February.

"A little over a year ago, it was he, as well as Secretary Paulson, who came to the Hill and insisted that we enact TARP, something that didn't quite turn out the way we had thought," said Cantor, a Republican from Virginia.

Instead, the Troubled Asset Relief Program "morphed into something entirely different, which resulted in taxpayers ending up owning banks and owning car companies," he said.

Much attention has been paid to whether Congress will pass a health care bill before Christmas, a notion Imus deemed insane for both its impossibility and its foolishness.

"Wouldn't it be better for America that we get it done right?" Cantor asked, and pointed out that neither initial goal laid out by President Obama — to provide universal health care and to bend the cost curve — has been achieved so far.

"When this bill came out of the House, the only bipartisanship was in opposition to it," Cantor said. The Senate is now debating the bill, with little progress.

Imus surmised the President was in a rush because he'd like to raise his self-assigned grade from a B-plus to, hell, an A-plus! Cantor, however, gave him an incomplete.

"Unemployment was never supposed to go over eight percent once we passed that $800 billion stimulus bill," he said. "As we know now, it's woefully off the mark — we've got 10 percent plus."

Other promises Obama made, like executing fiscal prudence and creating jobs, have also not been kept. "I think he's doing the wrong things for the right reasons," Cantor said. "I think in his heart, he wants a better life for Americans, he is just going about it completely the wrong way."

Rather than tackle job or wealth creation, Obama has been "trying to provide more safety nets, trying to take from those who've been able to create wealth and opportunity, and redistribute it," said Cantor. "That's not the America that any of us know."

He thinks the administration is distracted, citing as an example this past Sunday, when, on two different news shows, one White House economic advisor said on that the recession was over, and another said that it most certainly was not.

But, back to Imus, who needed to know whether his guest had any designs on higher office. Told Cantor was "focused" on his role in the House, Imus had some inspiring words for the young Congressman.

"If you don't have aspirations for something better," he said, "There isn't any reason for us to hook our wagon to your star."

-Julie Kanfer