BALTIMORE — President Barack Obama will speak today to Republicans from the House of Representatives, who voiced skepticism Thursday about his call for bipartisanship in his State of the Union address and vowed to continue opposing his agenda unless he — not they — changes course.
On the opening day of a two-day House GOP retreat in Baltimore, Republican leaders said Obama must do more than invite them to have a discussion, offer to cut capital gains taxes for small businesses and sing the praises of offshore drilling and nuclear energy to get their cooperation on contentious issues such as health care.
“We’re going to continue to go down the same path this year,” House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said before the retreat opened. “We’re going to look for common ground, but we’re not going to roll over on our principles.”
Obama is expected to repeat his bipartisanship plea today.
Bipartisanship wasn’t evident on Capitol Hill the morning after the president’s speech, however, as the Senate, backed by a party-line 60-40 vote, approved tough new “pay-as-you-go” curbs on future federal spending as part of legislation to increase the nation’s debt limit.
“While I’m pleased that the Senate passed pay-go, I am disappointed that no Republicans joined us in supporting this step to combat the deficits they helped create,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said.
Boehner said Obama’s speech showed the president didn’t learn any lessons from Scott Brown’s upset victory in the Massachusetts special election for Senate last week, nor from November’s Republican gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia. Instead, he said, Obama had decided “to just double-down on his job-killing agenda.”
Still, Republican leaders said they liked some elements of Obama’s bipartisanship overture, particularly the president’s positive remarks about offshore drilling and nuclear power.
“I don’t think I’ve heard the president be more forceful when it comes to the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States,” Boehner said. “So we’ll see . . . how that will manifest itself in legislation.”
