Boehner Claims Obama Made Presidency 'Smaller'

Source: ABC News

House Speaker John Boehner accused President Obama of diminishing the traditional role of the presidency by inventing "fake fights" over the student loan rate extension and parading around the country on campaign trips aboard Air Force One disguised as official business at taxpayers' expense.

"This is the biggest job in the world and I've never seen a president make it smaller," Boehner, R-Ohio, said during his weekly news conference. "The president keeps attempting to invent these fake fights because he doesn't have a record of success or a positive agenda for our country. It's as simple as this: The emperor has no clothes. They can't talk about their record on jobs because their policies have made the economy worse. They can't talk about their record on spending because the president's policies have added $5 trillion to the national debt and they can't talk about their record on gas prices because gas prices have more than doubled on the president's watch."

Boehner called on President Obama's campaign to reimburse the federal Treasury for his trips to Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina over the past week during which he made the student loan rate extension the focal point of his stump speech.

"The White House it seems is also entirely devoted to this type of petty politics. This week the president traveled across the country on taxpayers' dime at a cost of $179,000 an hour insisting that Congress fix a problem that we were already working on," he said. "This is beneath the dignity of the White House. Democrats and Republicans knew that this was going to take effect. Democrats and Republicans fully expected this would be taken care of and for the president to make a campaign issue out of this and then to travel to three battleground states and go to three large college campuses on taxpayers' money to try to make this a political issue is pathetic and his campaign ought to be reimbursing the Treasury for the cost of this trip."

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