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."
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/boehner-claims-obama-made-presidency-smaller-185219355--abc-news-politics.html
lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)embarrassment to the Speaker of the House duty that you've yet to do for the American people!
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Next he will accuse Obama of being a drunk who can't count.
lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)cosmicone
(11,014 posts)(I know he pronounces it Bay-ner)
liberal N proud
(60,289 posts)Tiggeroshii
(11,088 posts)"Made the presidency smaller." That's an attack?
libinnyandia
(1,374 posts)have made a better man. Historians will have nothing positive to say about Boehner and McConnell.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)Boehner takes a criticism leveled at Republicans and switches the names.
Just replace "President" with "Speaker"and "they" with "we" and you'll get closer to the truth.
polichick
(37,152 posts)Andy823
(11,495 posts)Boehner is a pathetic excuse for a human being, and this piece of crap seems to forget George W. Bush did the same thing during the elections. Who they can defend Bush when he did it, and now try and make a huge issue out of it when Obama does it, simply shows how little they have to attack the president on. I will be glad when Boehner is on the unemployed, next year!
Scuba
(53,475 posts)bucolic_frolic
(42,478 posts)John, I think it's called projection.
You're trying to diminish the President because you're small - small minded, small in the brain department, just plain small.
He never stops dribbling out these petty ideas to make himself look better.
Neurotic!
wandy
(3,539 posts)No, bohnerhead, the president is just a public servant. Not a king, not the ruler. Not much different than than the county dog collector.
You're just showing that the republican mind set would hold a president as something of an 'anointed one' given free range to RULE as they wish.
Not the way it works.
mazzarro
(3,450 posts)Boehner did not see anything smallish is Bush-the minor's performance as a president with is perpetual lies, shameful caricature and demeaning handling of the duties of the presidency. Yet he has the gall and knack to cast aspersion on Obama as lowering the presidency? If anyone is lowering their offices, it has to be Boehner and the rePIGs and of cause , their conveniently tucked away former leader, Bush-the minor.
Enrique
(27,461 posts)8%, teeniest in history!
LastLiberal in PalmSprings
(12,531 posts)Bush would fly somewhere in Air Force One to give some award to a teacher or announce a program which sounded good but wasn't, then he'd scamper off to his real reason for being there -- a GOP fund-raiser. You know the kind, those with his people, "the haves and the haves more."
Because of the award or announcement -- something which might take a half hour -- the taxpayer picked up the tab for the trip. The only part the Republicans had to reimburse the government for was the cost of comparable airline tickets -- a couple of thousand dollars for a fund raiser. Nice scam.
I'd also question Boehner's $179,000 an hour figure. I imagine he's adding everything he can to make that figure as high as possible, even those fixed expenses which would exist if the aircraft (there are two 747s and a host of other planes and helicopters available -- Air Force One is only the call sign of the one the President is on) just sat on the ramp at Andrews: salaries for the military pilots and maintenance men who take care of the airplane, proficiency flights, keeping the airplane stocked, fueled and ready to go at a moment's notice, the actual maintenance of the aircraft, especially the engines, the Secret Service, etc.
It's like the B.S. about the K-Y Jelly Pipeline creating 100,000 (or 200,000 or one million) new jobs. They count every single job which could possibly exist, including pizza delivery people, janitors, etc. The tried the same argument when they wanted to drill in the Artic National Wildlife Reserve, until someone told them to list all the jobs they were claiming would be created by the project.
Does it cost a lot to move the President from place to place? Yes. But he is the president of all the people, and that means he has to get out of Washington to see and be seen.
Boner's just an orange wine.
PatrynXX
(5,668 posts)and lives. John Boner is basically accusing obama of doing his job.
madrchsod
(58,162 posts)usrname
(398 posts)a fake fight is starting a war against a country who did us no harm, under false pretenses. A fake fight is pitting fellow citizens against each other, so that they're distracted from the rich looting the fighting participants.
Please learn to differentiate.
eyewall
(674 posts)Oh yeah, he'd flown on Air Force One to Florida where he was doing a photo op in a grade school to pitch his No-child-left-behind program. He even brought a huge entourage that included a large number of reporters.
Since he flew to Offut AFB, HQ for Strategic Air Command, as you would expect a president to do, would Boehner have felt better if Bush was flying on a commercial airliner?
Grassy Knoll
(10,118 posts)muntrv
(14,505 posts)DCBob
(24,689 posts)Boner needs therapy.
truthisfreedom
(23,108 posts)Boehner would have a really tough time in a debate with the President over these so-called facts. "The Emperor has no Clothes" argument is a perfect description of the entire Republican party, not the guy who killed Osama bin Laden and saved GM. If Mittens had been President, the reverse would be true. He diminished the importance of bin Laden and wouldn't have saved GM.
unkachuck
(6,295 posts)....that's because slick willard, the rich wall-street Mormon, has never been elected president....
....hey 'fake fight' boner, where are all those jobs you promised?....never mind, I bet the God-pukes and baggers are wondering too....do you really think those God-pukes and baggers are going to vote for a rich, wall-street, tarp-bailout, romney-care, 1%er Mormon?....
.....they don't hate blacks that much....stop trying so hard....
iemitsu
(3,888 posts)is that president obama has made the office smaller by being black.
i could be wrong but that's what it sounds like to me.
He's physically intimidated by Obama because of his height and desperately trying to wish Obama shorter.
iemitsu
(3,888 posts)he is imposing and graceful but not intimidating. statuesque. a man who has earned the right to hold his head high.
i can see why any politician (especially one who habitually hides in a bottle) would envy mr obama this attribute.
yet, i still sense a tone in boehner's statement that suggests he thinks the office of the presidency has been "made smaller" by the occupant.
i've heard the same tone from "old guys" grumbling about having to admit new blood (brown skinned people) to fraternal clubs.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)I'm thinking that to a guy like Boener when a young black man he wishes he could or thinks he should call boy (what would dad\grandpa think knowing I can't put this --- in his place?) is much physically stronger, taller, and much much smarter than him, the continual dissonance is intimidating. Obama's height is just a stark reminder and his word choice (smaller.. diminish) is his wishful thinking coming through.
iemitsu
(3,888 posts)you are probably right.
pfitz59
(10,170 posts)Boehner lives up to his name...he's pulled another one....
Zoeisright
(8,339 posts)You are a disgusting piece of shit, you orange day-glo crybaby. YOU have denigrated the office of Speaker of the House and you belong in the Hague.
iemitsu
(3,888 posts)the nerve of such a failure-of-a-man to make such comments about mr obama.
boehner assumes a lot about his own qualifications when he targets the president.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)sky imager
(36 posts)This prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has no interest or imagination for this country, his continued predilection of irrelevancy demonstrates.