Eric Cantor to Washington: 'Get with the program'

When he was House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor was one of President Obama’s chief Republican antagonists. These days, however, Cantor sounds more like a pragmatic conciliator than the GOP firebrand who worked tirelessly to kill Obama’s favorite programs.

“Washington needs to get with the program,” Cantor told Yahoo Finance during an interview at the Milken Institute’s annual conference of business leaders in Los Angeles. “They need to put differences aside and say, ‘let’s go for growth.’”

Cantor, of course, left Congress last year after his surprise loss to a relative unknown in a Virginia primary election. Fear not: He landed on his feet. Cantor is now vice chairman at Moelis & Co., a New York investment bank, which offers certain satisfactions. “What I like best about being in the private sector is the ability to forge solutions, consummate deals and produce results,” Cantor says in the video above. (It’s a safe bet he also earns more than the $193,400 salary he pulled down as the second-ranking member of the House leadership).

Business leaders frequently express frustration with the scorched-earth political warfare in Washington, and Cantor now sounds like one of them. Instead of advocating for a staunchly Republican agenda, he’d like to see bipartisan efforts to open up trade, improve education, fix a broken immigration system and spend more on key priorities. That's an evolution, shall we say, from the consistent opposition to Obama's initiatives Cantor expressed and cultivated as House Majority Leader.

Cantor has always favored spending cuts to offset any new programs, but if that’s not possible -- then spend anyway. "There’s no question we need more infrastructure spending in this country,” Cantor says. “The realities of Washington are such that the president is not going to allow for there to be offsets.”

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Like many business leaders, Cantor wants to see a sweeping reform bill that makes the tax code simpler and more fair. But he acknowledges how difficult that will be and says Congress should start with smaller measures if bigger ones are out of reach. (Here's the full interview with Cantor.)

Cantor was a budget hawk while in Congress, favoring a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and tough limits on spending. He has since mellowed. He's a strong advocate of additional spending on scientific research, for instance, even if it adds to the deficit. “I would rather see us live within our means, but if we’re going to see that spending, let’s just put it into research,” he says.

Spending battles dating to the 2011 Budget Control Act will soon be playing out all over again, with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress hoping to waive limits on defense spending put in place back then, and Obama refusing to agree unless spending limits on other priorities are waived as well. Shaun Donovan, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, recently told Yahoo Finance that “the real crunch comes on Oct. 1,” when the government’s next fiscal year begins. Another government shutdown is possible if the two parties can’t agree.

Cantor would rather not see that this time around, even though critics accused him of prolonging the last shutdown, in 2013. “What the business community is looking for out of Washington is a pro-growth agenda,” he says. Economists broadly agree that shutting down the government or threatening disruptions in federal spending or debt payments slows growth rather than speeding it. The best way to convince members of Congress of that may be to send them into corporate America for a while.

Rick Newman’s latest book is Liberty for All: A Manifesto for Reclaiming Financial and Political Freedom. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.