Today, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) appeared at the Economist’s World in 2010 conference (attended by ThinkProgress), where he took exception to NBC’s David Gregory characterizing Republicans as “not really a party of ideas, because they don’t want to be.” Cantor claimed that it’s actually the media’s fault that no one hears about Republican ideas, because “it’s not as sexy of a story to cover our ideas right now.” But when the Economist’s Daniel Franklin gave Cantor an opportunity to present his big idea for job creation, Cantor couldn’t come through:

FRANKLIN: What is the big idea? “Jobs” is not an idea.

CANTOR: The big idea is to get, to get, to produce an environment where we can have job creation again. And see, that’s where the Obama administration’s agenda so clearly disadvantages the Democrats in this upcoming election in eleven months and advantages us.

Watch it:

If Cantor’s goal is “to produce an environment where we can have job creation again,” shouldn’t he have supported the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e the economic stimulus), which has boosted GDP growth and lending to small businesses, while cutting taxes for workers, thereby boosting demand? And shouldn’t he be supporting further efforts in Congress to craft a jobs bill that emphasizes infrastructure spending and lending to small businesses?

Instead, Cantor has put forth a “no-cost jobs plan” that Andrew Leonard rightly called a “magic pony jobs plan.” “Cut regulations. Freeze spending. Cut taxes. No new taxes. That’s the plan,” Leonard wrote.

Later in the discussion, Cantor replied to a question about the U.S.’s role at the climate change conference in Copenhagen by saying, “I think from the larger sense the question of climate change comes down to, if there’s been any constant in human history it’s been climate change, and the real question is the severity of that and the involvement of humans in all of that.” Watch it:

Former White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart responded, “I wouldn’t have predicted last year that scientific doubters would still have this strong a voice.”

Cross-posted on ThinkProgress.

Last week, legislation was introduced in the House that would implement a .25 percent financial transactions tax (FTT or Tobin tax), which would affect all trades, except those pertaining to retirement, health and education savings, and mutual fund accounts. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has offered her support to the idea, saying that “I believe the transaction tax still has a great deal of merit.” “It is really a source of revenue that has really minimal impact on the transaction but a tremendous impact on helping us meet our needs,” she added.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) has said that he will introduce a similar bill in the Senate. “I don’t look upon it as any kind of way of punishment or anything like that,” Harkin said. “I mean, we’re just looking for revenue. We’re looking for ways of getting out of this hole we’re in.”

Thus far, the administration has been cool toward the transactions tax, with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner reiterating over the weekend that “I have not seen the version of that that I think works.” Today, at the Economist’s World in 2010 conference (attended by ThinkProgress), Council of Economic Advisers member Austan Goolsbee was asked about the transactions tax. He said he thinks such a tax “would be hard” to implement, and that the FTT was merely a “serving as a proxy” for more robust financial regulation:

It’s clear it would have to be done by everybody, and don’t overlook the temptation of a bunch of small — there are a whole bunch of, I don’t know if it would be Singapore or somebody who wants to be a financial center — saying ‘everybody else is going to tax your transactions but we won’t, so you should move all your stuff here.’

So I think it would be hard…Tobin himself would often say ‘well I don’t know if it exactly could work,’ because everybody’s got to do it together. The second thing I’d say, though, is it’s clearly getting at don’t we need a stronger regulatory environment. The Tobin tax is serving as a proxy for ‘don’t we need tougher, tighter, more robust oversight.’ Obviously we do.

Watch it:

The first point Goolsbee makes is worth considering, especially in light of Germany’s assertion yesterday that an FTT is not in the cards. “This government has taken office to lower taxes, not to levy new ones,” said Development Minister Dirk Niebel. But this concern should be balanced by acknowledging that there is a cost to a company for moving as well, and the United Kingdom instituted a .25 percent stock trading tax and still has a vibrant financial industry. Threats to move overseas may have more to do with the financial industry fearmongering than any real intent to move.

As for Goolsbee’s second assertion, I think he’s missing the mark. As Harkin pointed out, an FTT isn’t just about regulation, but also raising deficit-reducing revenues from the one source that can most afford it these days: Wall Street. In a $50 trillion trading industry (under conservative estimates), surely a tax that will raise $100 billion yearly can be managed. As Dean Baker wrote, “the economic collapse caused by Wall Street’s irrational exuberance has led to a huge increase in the country’s debt burden. It seems only fair that Wall Street bear the brunt of the clean-up costs.”