President Obama has dispatched Vice President Biden, the number two man in the government and nominally the head of the U.S. Senate, to handle negotiations with the GOP over deficit reduction.
Today, Republicans said that shows Obama doesn’t really care much about getting the economy back on track.
“As a business person, the people I know running businesses, if their business was in jeopardy of going out of business, they’d be rolling up their sleeves, they’d be working 16, 17, 18 hours a day to solve a problem,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said. “And yet our president is totally disengaged. He sent his Vice President to negotiate what, maybe once a week? Twice a week?”
Johnson was part of a panel of Republican Senators that was billed as a chance “to discuss how the Obama Administration’s agenda of more regulation, more taxes and more debt is impacting America’s economic recovery.”
The Senators attacked Obama over the health care law, EPA regulations and the host of other criticisms they’ve lobbed down Pennsylvania Avenue for months. They also accused the president of putting the economy on the back burner and — as the appointment of Biden as chief negotiator shows, they said — not caring enough to engage himself.
“We can’t solve these problems without getting involved,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said, “He’s our leader, he should get involved and not just shovel it off to somebody else.”
Hatch called on Obama to directly engage in negotiations over entitlement programs and demanded Medicare changes “be on the table” as part of the process.
Johnson said Obama just needs to get involved more, period.
“We are facing a debt crisis and our president is just phoning it in,” he said.
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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