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Politico...
Obama
debt ceiling taunts draw fire
from Republicans
By Jonathan Allen
6/30/11
President
Barack Obama is quickly
finding out that hell hath no fury like Republicans scorned by a
comparison to
pre-adolescent girls.
On
Thursday, Republicans lashed back
at Obama’s schoolmarmish scolding of them for taking time off and
failing in,
his words, to do their “homework” on a debt-limit increase.
Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
(R-Ky.) called on Obama to drop what he’s doing and come to the Capitol
for a
meeting.
National
Republican Senatorial
Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) said the president should put
his
money where his mouth is by canceling a Thursday night fundraiser in
Philadelphia to focus on the debt.
Rep.
Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), a
freshman lawmaker, sent Obama a letter asking him to put forward a
specific
deficit-reduction plan. “House Republicans acted, and now we await your
spending reduction plan — perhaps not with open arms, but we do have
open minds,”
Labrador wrote.
And
Republicans haven’t even started
talking about Obama’s weekly golf outings or his vacation plans this
summer.
But Democrats who thought Obama was churlish in his Wednesday White
House press
conference know that criticism is coming.
“The
president might as well cancel
every golf game, Martha’s Vineyard vacation and fundraiser from here
until
doomsday because he’s living in a glass White House and Republicans are
already
throwing rocks,” said a senior congressional Democratic source who
described
watching Obama’s press conference in bewilderment.
It
remains to be seen who will win the
battle of the schoolyard taunts — both on politics and policy — but
Republicans
clearly think the president drew the wrong line in the sand during his
nationally televised press conference.
And
it’s not clear, exactly, who the
president was trying to win over in terms of building a coalition for a
debt
limit vote. Certainly not the Republicans he’ll have to cut a deal with.
“The
president doesn’t seem to get it.
So let me do something that I think would be constructive,” McConnell
said in a
Senate floor speech. “I’d like to invite the president to come to the
Capitol
today to join Republicans for lunch, or at any time this afternoon that
he can
make it. That way he can hear directly from Republicans why what he’s
proposing
won’t pass. And we can start talking about what’s actually possible.”
Read
the rest of the story at Politico
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