Politics & Power Quote by Eric Cantor

Cantor’s line is doing the classic post-crisis two-step: moralize the problem, then marketize the solution. “People have to take responsibility for themselves” isn’t just a plea for personal virtue; it’s a frame that relocates blame from lenders, regulators, and policy failures onto individual borrowers. The phrase sounds commonsensical because it borrows the language of adulthood and self-control, but its real function is political triage: if the crisis is an aggregate of bad choices, the remedy is discipline, not structural reform.

Then comes the pivot: “We need to get the housing industry going again.” This is less about homeowners than about liquidity, confidence, and construction as economic engine. “Housing industry” subtly swaps a social good (housing security) for a growth sector (housing as commerce). It signals that the priority is restarting transactions - mortgages written, homes built, assets moving - even if the last boom’s churn was part of the problem.

The final clause - “We don’t need government intervening in every step” - is a preemptive strike against the very tools that tend to follow a housing collapse: tighter lending rules, foreclosure mitigation, consumer protections, and oversight of risky financial products. The rhetorical trick is the absolutism of “every step,” which makes even targeted regulation sound smothering and nannyish.

Contextually, this fits the early 2010s Republican pushback against Obama-era interventions after the 2008 meltdown: rescue the market’s momentum, resist regulatory expansion, and wrap it in a story about personal responsibility. The subtext is clear: revive the machine, but don’t let referees back on the field.