In an interview with USA Today on Tuesday, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) agreed with President Obama that Washington’s spending is out of control and that leadership in Washington has failed. Speaking at a White House press conference Monday, President Obama said,
"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It's a sign that the US government can't pay its own bills. It's a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."
Conservative talk show mogul, Rush Limbaugh, suggested that Republicans would do well if they took the president’s speech and read it right back to him. Limbaugh suggested that Republicans and moderates are fooling themselves if they believe that the president would negotiate on decreasing spending following his victory in getting a tax increase. Obama made it clear he had no interest in negotiating but demanded that Republicans either raise the debt ceiling or give him the power to do so, saying they would be to blame for the federal government defaulting on its financial obligations.
During the debt ceiling debate of 2011, Rubio made reference to the United States becoming “a deadbeat nation” as the federal government sank more and more into debt. The senator said that America would eventually come to grief as many European nations are whose governments have borrowed heavily and gone into unrecoverable debts. The president took offense at this suggestion, and in his press conference Monday snapped back that if America failed to meet its financial obligations it was because of Republicans.
The White House’s Acting Budget Director, Jeff Zients, in a letter delivered last Friday told Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, that the president’s suggested budget will not be delivered by Feb. 4, as required by law.
Comments