Earlier on Monday, President Barack Obama hosted a news conference – his second focusing on the debt-ceiling negotiations. But is he acting with the intention of securing a deal?
On Monday’s Laura Ingraham radio, House Speaker John Boehner said the president wasn’t acting in good faith, particularly with his class warfare rhetoric. Instead Boehner said he was in “re-election mode.”
“Well you know the president is in re-election mode,” Boehner said. “And as a result, that is where a lot of this rhetoric comes from. I told the president, and I’ve asked him. I said, ‘Mr. President, let’s forget about the next election. You can forget about yours and I’ll forget about mine and let’s get serious about doing the right thing for the country.’ We know what the right thing is. We got 10,000 baby-boomers retiring every single day. This problem has gotten away from Washington and the sooner we get our arms around it, the better off the country will be. This best thing we can do is to have real spending cuts and have them enacted now so we can provide some confidence for the job creators in America that we’re dealing with long-term and short-term fiscal problems.”
Host Laura Ingraham questioned Boehner about whether the commander-in-chief was doing enough on the economy, which has taken hits in recent weeks with rising unemployment and weak gross domestic product forecasts.
“It doesn’t appear so,” Boehner said. “You know, I know he’s trying to get this debt deal done but let me tell you at some point he’s got to recognize that the economy is the number one issue in the minds of Americans and if we can instill some confidence in job creators, we will in fact create a better environment for job creators.”