EmailABC News’ Rick Klein reports: While House Minority Leader John Boehner came out for repealing the new Wall Street reform bill even before it was signed into law, the House’s No. 2 Republican said today he would wait to see how the law is implemented by federal regulators before deciding how to proceed. “So much of it is going to be left up to the regulators, and how it goes into effect, will be borne out in the agencies of the executive branch,” House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., said today on ABC/Washington Post’s “Top Line.” “And when the Republicans reclaim the majority in November, it will be incumbent upon us to insist that the regulations reflect the kind of free-enterprise job growth environment that we want to see, not towards the direction that this administration continues to drive.”
Cantor cast the new Wall Street reform law as “just another part of an agenda that has, frankly, been detrimental to the economy.” “We’ve not seen the kind of job growth that Americans want to see. In fact, the job growth results have not been at all what this administration has promised, and that’s why you see so much anger out there across this country,” Cantor added. “And this financial services regulatory reform bill is just another step in the direction of trying to prescribe from Washington the outcomes across the economy.” “And the end result of this bill will be to lessen the amount of credit available to small businesses, to families; to increase the cost of everything, because of Washington overreaction in terms of some of the regulations in this bill. I mean, let’s face it, you know: Did we have some excesses that brought on the collapse of the financial markets? You better believe it. But that doesn’t mean that you have to swing the pendulum back so far in the other direction to basically impede the kind of job growth that we need so desperately right now.” Cantor also said Republicans would “absolutely” develop a series of proposals that would present their ideas for governing to voters. He said to look for a September rollout of those plans. “What we’re gonna see out of Republican members of Congress is a coming together around an agenda that reflects the kind of work that we’ve been doing here in the House over the last year and a half,” he said. “As you know, the administration, although it continued to say it wanted to work across the aisle to solve problems, it really never put its money where its mouth is, so to speak. And so, each step of the way — whether it was a stimulus bill, whether it was the health care bill, the financial services bill, the energy bill — the Republican conference put forward a set of solutions that tried to answer the real problems, which is jobs and the economy, so that we don’t impose any more burden on the people. “It is those solutions that will be part of the plan that we will see unfolded as an agenda for governing this fall.” Watch the full interview with Rep. Eric Cantor HERE. For our daily “Post Politics” segment, we checked in with Chris Cillizza, who writes “The Fix” blog for The Washington Post, on the political fallout over the ouster of Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod, plus Sarah Palin’s latest foray into politics, in the gubernatorial race in Georgia. Watch the discussion with Chris Cillizza HERE.