BY TYLER WHITLEY
Media General News Service

President Barack Obama’s stimulus package is not working and should be amended to encourage more job creation by small businesses, the House of Representatives’ Republican whip said Monday.

Rep. Eric I. Cantor, R-7th, seized on weekend remarks by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that the Obama administration underestimated the depth of the economic recession when it was preparing the $787 billion stimulus package. Biden said the economic projections made before the Obama administration took office were overly optimistic.

In a conference call with reporters, Cantor said the fact that unemployment is approaching 10 percent shows that the package is not working.

“It is my belief that they didn’t misread the economy. What they did is they miswrote the stimulus bill and got the prescription wrong,” Cantor said.

He said that more emphasis should have been placed on creating jobs in the private sector rather than preserving jobs in the public sector.

Cantor said that when the bill was under discussion, he and other Republican leaders presented the president with an alternate plan that would have lowered tax rates and allowed small businesses to take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their income. Small businesses employ about half of all private-sector employees, Cantor’s office said.

Some Democrats are suggesting that another stimulus bill is needed. Cantor disagreed, saying some of the money in the existing bill should be redirected to job-creating programs that work.

“This administration has tried to do way too much too soon,” Cantor said.

The Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee accused Cantor of hypocrisy, noting he has criticized the stimulus plan while praising a proposal for high-speed rail between Washington and Richmond that would use stimulus funds.

“It’s time that the Cantor-led ‘party of no’ stopped playing politics with American jobs and started offering real solutions to help the president put the country back on the right track,” Alex Gerlach, a spokesman for the DNC, said.

Asked about his support of the high-speed rail, Cantor said the rail system could promote 185,000 jobs in Virginia.

“I don’t see any inconsistency there with supporting something that creates 185,000 jobs and being against a bill that has spent almost $800 billion, only maybe 12 percent that could arguably be proven to have any job-creating potential,” he said.

Tyler Whitley is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch.