Boehner responded to the passage of the bill fixing the flight delays that his caucus caused with the sequester cuts by blaming President Obama for the furloughed air traffic controllers.
Speaker Boehner said,
The disruption to America’s air traffic system over the past week was a consequence of the administration’s choice to implement the president’s sequestration cuts in the most painful manner possible. It’s unacceptable that the FAA chose not to plan for sequestration or utilize the flexibility it already has. Americans were rightly fed up, and it’s unfortunate that the House and Senate were forced to step in and fix the problem when the President chose not to act.
With this solution, Americans will no longer be burdened by President Obama’s flight delays and our economy will not take an unnecessary hit. This fix will prevent furloughs of air traffic controllers and do so without any new revenue and without adding to the debt. Just like we’ve done here in the House, the administration must learn how to do more with less. Sequestration is bad policy. That’s why the House voted twice to replace it with smarter cuts. But while it is here, the president has an obligation to implement these cuts in a way that respects the American people, rather than using them for political leverage.
Speaker Boehner seems to have completely forgotten that House repugicans like Paul Ryan had been championing the sequester since 2004. Boehner has apparently wiped from his memory that President Obama has had a sequester replacement on the table since December 2012. The Speaker incorrectly claimed that the American people wouldn’t feel any pain from the sequester cuts, and even though he referred to the situation as the president’s sequester cuts, during a March 21 interview on CNN, Boehner admitted that the didn’t want the sequester cuts.
The truth is that Speaker Boehner is responsible for all the negative impacts of the sequester, because he refused to allow any sequester replacement bills to be voted on in the House. Boehner continues to lie to the American people by claiming that the House passed replacement cuts, but the sequester replacement that they passed occured in the 112 Congress, not the current 113th. Because the bill passed during the 112th Congress did not pass the Senate, it died when the current Congress was sworn in. Thus Speaker Boehner has not passed a sequester replacement bill.
As the impacts of the sequester becomes more severe, the House repugican game plan is to blame Obama for the cuts, while they portray themselves as heroes for rushing in to fix their own mistakes. It is a cynical, and pathetic political ploy that House repugicans are using to cover up their corrupt agenda and complete lack of concern for 98% of the country.
It’s just more of the pin the blame on the president finger pointing that we have come to expect from the worst Speaker in recent history.
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