Era of big government' is back

Boehner: 'Era of big government' is back

by Susan Crabtree
Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) declared a return to “the era of big government” the day after President Obama’s first formal address to Congress.

“From everything I’ve seen, it looks like the era of big government spending is back,” he told reporters at a lunch convened by the Christian Science Monitor. “My question to my Democratic friends is how are you going to pay for it?”

The top Republican leader in the House praised President Obama for making a “compelling” case that the nation can overcome its economic challenges and pledged to work with him when he reaches across the aisle.

He later clarified that Republicans will work with Obama on areas of agreement but would maintain their ideological differences and fight for them. Despite several personal entreaties from Obama to support the stimulus bill, House Republicans illustrated their solid opposition when not one Republican crossed the aisle to support it last week.

Boehner also implied that Obama’s speech attempted to cast his policies as more conservative than they really are, even as government spending skyrockets with the last week’s $787 billion stimulus bill and a $410 billion omnibus appropriations measure, which the House is considering Wednesday.

“With few exceptions, it was a speech I could have given – it was a very conservative speech,” Boehner said. “But actions speak louder than words.”

"As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President’s Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets," Obama said in his Tuesday night address. "Not because I believe in bigger government – I don’t."

He criticized Obama’s claim that the stimulus bill contained no earmarks, arguing that it was simply a semantic issue on how Democrats were defining the term and was actually chock full of them. In the same vein, he said the omnibus is so full of earmarks that it doesn’t “pass the straight-face test,” although he acknowledged that Republicans are guilty of requesting a good portion of the pet projects in the massive spending measure.

With diminished numbers after the November election, Boehner said Republicans are not in the “legislative business” and will be more effective voicing “better solutions” and communicating them to the American people rather than producing a specific legislative agenda.

Republicans also will be closely monitoring exactly how the stimulus money is spent over the next 18 months and will hammer away at any program or funding they regard as wasteful, Boehner pledged. While Obama is popular, the stimulus bill he championed is not, Boehner stressed, pointing to a new Rasmussen poll showing that 58 percent of Americans believe it will hurt the economy or have little impact. The chances of passing another hefty spending bill aimed at boosting the economy are slim, he predicted, because Americans have “bailout fatigue.”

“Without a compelling case, that’s going to be a tough sell,” he said.

Boehner said he’s “not happy” that business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, which are usually aligned with Republicans, supported the stimulus measure, but he chocked it up to the influential industries just “being their pragmatic selves” and doing “what they had to do.”

Democrats’ new bill aimed at propping up the housing market by empowering bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages is the “worst idea in the world,” in his view.

“When we need to bring more certainty to lenders and more liquidity to the market, this cram-down bill is very bad policy,” he said.

Boehner also laid down a hard line Republicans plan to take on any Democratic health care or insurance-coverage proposal.

“I think government running the biggest health care company in the world is preposterous,” he said.