If Only Eric Cantor Were as Successful in Cutting the Budget as Imus is in Setting Hair on Fire...

Rep. Eric Cantor is sick of playing the blame game when it comes to the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Unless, that is, he gets to blame President Obama.

“Apparently, the agencies here in Washington under the Obama administration have not responded to the requests by Louisiana, by its delegation here in Washington,” he said, referring to requests Governor Bobby Jindal and others have made to build barriers that would prevent the oil from inundating Louisiana’s marshes.

Cantor, a Republican from Virginia, encouraged the administration to approve the plan because, as he put it, “this is not time to dilly-dally,” given the overwhelming environmental and economic concerns.

Speaking of the economy, Cantor hopes Dr. Nouriel Roubini is wrong in thinking the worst may be yet to come in the financial sector.

“We have unprecedented challenges right now,” he told Imus, citing the budget deficit as chief among them. “Right now, there’s a federal government just inhaling cash it doesn’t have.”

In an attempt to somehow begin to cut this country’s trillions of dollars of debt, Cantor recently launched a program called YouCut, where Americans can go online to vote for their “favorite” way to cut the budget.

“There are five options every week,” he explained. “The winner is tallied, and we bring it to a vote on the House floor.”

This week’s winner, to be brought to the floor today, is to eliminate pay raises for non-military federal employees. “That’s common sense right now,” said Cantor. “While people in the private sector are sitting there not getting any pay raise, having pay cuts, or not having a job at all, and we’re expecting a pay raise here in Washington? No. Absolutely not.”

Ignoring Imus’s comparison of YouCut to American Idol, Cantor insisted Congress has to start somewhere when it comes to cutting the budget. “We have over 500,000 votes cast on this thing,” he said of YouCut. “The public gets it.”

Cantor also applauded Congressman Darrell Issa, a frequent guest on this program, for investigating if the Obama administration offered Rep. Joe Sestak, who recently beat the incumbent Senator Arlen Specter for the Democratic nomination in Pennsylvania, a job in order to get him to withdraw from that race.

Not surprisingly, Imus commented, “I have no problem with that,” and subsequently set Cantor’s very handsomely cut hair on fire.

-Julie Kanfer