John Boehner unavailable for comment.
(The Hill) — House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), met by an organized protest before his planned speech on economics at the University of Michigan Monday, criticized demonstrators for showing “ire and hatred.”
“To me if you’ve got a problem you ought to go about trying to fix it in a constructive manner,” Cantor said, according to local news site AnnArbor.com.
The protesters, many part of the local Occupy Ann Arbor movement, confronted Cantor ahead of his speaking engagement hosted by the university’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
The demonstration was staged as a “Funeral for the Middle Class,” with many protesters holding signs shaped like tombstones.
The Occupy Ann Arbor movement is part of the larger Occupy Wall Street protest movement, which began in New York City in mid-September and has spread across the country. Cantor responded to the protest movement early in the month by calling protesters “mobs,” though he later said he understood the “frustration” that prompted the movement.
“Let’s not pit one against another,” he said, slamming the “ire and hatred toward certain people” demonstrated by protesters as something not “constructive.”
He added, “I don’t think it’s reflective of the majority of America.”
Update:
(Ann Arbor) — Inside the University of Michigan League, U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, spoke of the opportunity of Americans to move up “the economic ladder.”
Outside, a group of about 70 students and Ann Arbor residents protested a perceived economic inequality that they say makes it too difficult to climb that ladder.
The House majority leader gave a speech today at the Michigan League in Ann Arbor as a part of a lecture series at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
“Social justice is about fairness. Fairness is making sure that we afford opportunities for everyone to pursue their happiness,” Cantor said. “There are several folks that have stood up to say tax the rich. That that’s somehow fair.”
“That all we have to do is redistribute the wealth and we can create the American dream for more.” he continued. “That doesn’t work. . . wealth distribution doesn’t work.”