With his latest speech, the House Majority Leader is attempting to say the GOP has done a basic 180° turn-around...NOT! House Majority Leader Eric Cantor recently delivered remarks at the conservative American Enterprise Institute that outlined a number of major policy initiatives designed to “Make Life Work” for more people. But when you read the whole, very long speech, Cantor uses many words and phrases that were duplicates of those taken from previous speeches of President Obama’s. Mr. Cantor even begins his speech saying, “The House Republican Majority stands ready for President Obama and his party to finally join us in our efforts to tackle the big problems facing America.” If you switch the words “The House Republican Majority” with “President Obama”, you get exactly what the president has been asking for 4 years.. All of this while the Republicans in both the House and the Senate had just been saying, “no” to anything presented by the Democrats. Per Cantor, “Over the next two years, the House majority will pursue an agenda based on a shared vision of creating the conditions for health, happiness and prosperity for more Americans and their families.” It’s about time that the Republicans signed up for this, but some of this was also taken from more than one of the president’s speeches. In his speech, Cantor also said, “In America, the daughter of a poor single mother can grow up to own her own television network. In America, the grandson of poor immigrants who fled religious persecution in Russia can become the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives.” A similar story is in past Obama speeches as well as in his book, “Dreams from my Father”, about a young black man raised by a single mother and becoming a US Senator. The following was almost verbatim from an Obama stump speech, “Government policy should aim to strike a balance between what is needed to advance the next generation, what is a federal responsibility and what is necessary to ensure our children are safe, healthy and able to reach their dreams.” Mr. Cantor says, “Over the course of this Congress, we will also work to reform our student aid process to give students a financial incentive to finish their studies sooner. We will encourage entrepreneurship in higher education, including for-profit schools. And we will fix the way we subsidize education by making the costs more transparent to parents, students and the millions of taxpayers who help pay some of the bill. We owe it to them.” Again, right out of the president’s play book, but this is the majority leader of the party that wants to cut public school funding, get rid of Pell Grants for college students and that wants student loans to go back to being managed by the banks. This is much more expensive for students from middle-class American families. Majority Leader Cantor says, “Each year our colleges and universities graduate approximately 40,000 foreign nationals with Masters and PhDs, many of whom are then forced to leave the country because there are not enough visa slots in our immigration system to permit them to stay. So rather than being able to invent things here in America, grow businesses or start one on their own, they do all of those things somewhere else.” Again, right out of the president’s stump speeches as was the following from Mr. Cantor, “Loopholes and gimmicks benefitting those who’ve come to know how to work the system in Washington….Working families should come first. Everyone agrees a fairer, simpler tax code would give us all more time.” You may recall that before the 2012 election, it was Mr. Cantor and his party that were against all of government and saying that “government can’t make jobs”. (However, Mr. Cantor has a government job!) Here is a comment from his speech that before the elections, I don’t believe he would have made; “There’s a police officer at home in my district, her name is Vicki. She is working a tough job, with long hours, while raising her children. Her life is made a little easier because as a local government employee, she is permitted to work some extra hours and save it up for a sick day or a school event.” Yes, Mr. “All government is bad Cantor”, now says there are some positive aspects to, “being a government employee”. To show another level of GOP hypocrisy, here’s Cantor’s latest comments that previously were coming from a party that during the latest political campaign wanted all un-documented immigrants to perform “self-deportation” and return to their mother country. Now, after his party losing last November, here’s ”Mr. anti-immigration’s” latest comments, “It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children and who know no other home. I’m pleased that many of my colleagues in both chambers of Congress on both sides of the aisle have begun work in good faith to address these issues. And I’m pleased these discussions make border security, employment verification and creating a workable guest worker program an immediate priority. It’s the right thing to do for our families, for our security, and for our economy.” “Colleagues from both side of the aisle working together?” Since when? I’m sorry Mr. Cantor, but as with you, I am also Virginia. And regarding your speech, you will recognize this as to what they say back where we both came from….”I’m sorry son, but that dog don’t hunt!” Copyright G.Ater 2013