Politics

Boehner calls for Obama to fire Tim Geithner and Larry Summers

Alex Pappas Political Reporter
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House Minority Leader John Boehner is calling on President Obama to fire his team of economic advisers Tuesday, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House adviser Larry Summers.

“We have been told that the president’s economic team is ‘exhausted’ — already, his budget director and his chief economist have moved on or are about to,” Boehner plans to say during a speech this morning on jobs and the economy
at the City Club of Cleveland in Ohio. “Clearly, they see the writing on the wall, and the president should too.”

Boehner, according to planned remarks, argues that the Obama administration is not listening to the concerns of small business owners. “Part of the reason for that is that virtually no one in the White House has run a small business and created jobs in the private sector,” he says. “That lack of real-world, hands-on experience shows in the policies coming out of this Administration.”

“We’ve tried 19 months of government-as-community organizer. It hasn’t worked. Our fresh start needs to begin now,” he says.

In his address, Boehner makes the following demands, in his own words:

  • Obama should announce he will not carry out his plan to impose job-killing tax hikes on families and small businesses.
  • Obama should announce that he will veto any job-killing bills sent to his desk by a lame-duck Congress – including “card check,” a national energy tax, and any other tax increases on families and small businesses.
  • Obama should call on Democratic Leaders in Congress to stop obstructing Republicans’ attempts to repeal the new health-care law’s job-killing “1099 mandate.”
  • Obama should submit to Congress for its immediate consideration an aggressive spending reduction package.

Democrats preempted the speech with a conference call on Monday. Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz asked if she saw the speech as a measuring-the-drapes moment for Boehner, who would likely become speaker if the GOP wins control of the House, replied that instead, she sees it as a “smoking-the-drapes moment.”

“I mean, he really is smoking the drapes if he thinks the policies that they adopted, that they championed, that drove us into the ditch are the ones that we should return to,” she said.