OBAMA'S ECONOMY WATCH:"Era of Big Government is Back"

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) declared a return to “the era of big government” the day after President Obama’s first formal address to Congress.“From everything I’ve seen, it looks like the era of big government spending is back,” he told reporters at a lunch convened by the Christian Science Monitor. “My question to my Democratic friends is how are you going to pay for it?”The top Republican leader in the House praised President Obama for making a “compelling” case that the nation can overcome its economic challenges and pledged to work with him when he reaches across the aisle.He later clarified that Republicans will work with Obama on areas of agreement but would maintain their ideological differences and fight for them.Despite several personal entreaties from Obama to support the stimulus bill, House Republicans illustrated their solid opposition when not one Republican crossed the aisle to support it last week.Boehner also implied that Obama’s speech attempted to cast his policies as more conservative than they really are, even as government spending skyrockets with the last week’s $787 billion stimulus bill and a $410 billion omnibus appropriations measure, which the House is considering Wednesday.“With few exceptions, it was a speech I could have given-it was a very conservative speech,”Boehner said.“But actions speak louder than words.”"As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President’s Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets," Obama said in his Tuesday night address."Not because I believe in bigger government-I don’t." He criticized Obama’s claim that the stimulus bill contained no earmarks, arguing that it was simply a semantic issue on how Democrats were defining the term and was actually chock full of them. In the same vein, he said the omnibus is so full of earmarks that it doesn’t “pass the straight-face test,” although he acknowledged that Republicans are guilty of requesting a good portion of the pet projects in the massive spending measure...
By Susan Crabtree
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