Ray LaHood, a former Republican congressman and transportation secretary under President Obama, does not believe the president followed through on his promise to push for bipartisanship.
“Bipartisanship is in his DNA. I’m proof of it,” LaHood told the New York Times in an interview published on Wednesday. “But time and intervening circumstance didn’t allow him to do it in the way that he would have wanted to.”
LaHood told the Times that he was quickly disappointed after joining the Obama administration when Democrats pushed for an economic stimulus package without much support from Republicans.
“I think they felt like they need to push this through quickly to get the economy moving,” he told the Times. “And, boom, they made a decision that they were going to pass economic stimulus with just Democratic votes. That was the beginning of the end of bipartisanship.”
LaHood said he ultimately refused to help the administration collect Republican votes for the package.
“I stopped making calls. I did not expect Republicans to roll over and accept the president’s ambitious economic recovery agenda whole cloth,” he said.
“The White House had reached this decision without consulting me, the person they had selected to promote bipartisanship,” LaHood added.
The former transportation secretary also detailed Obama’s lack of bipartisanship in his book published last month, “Seeking Bipartisanship: My Life in Politics.”
“I do not believe the White House ever committed fully to a genuine bipartisan approach to policy making, despite the president’s words to the contrary,” he wrote, according to the Times.
LaHood said that the president relied heavily on select advisers, rather than working across the aisle with members of Congress, and became more “isolated” as time passed.
“President Obama depended almost exclusively on a handful of folks situated in the White House,” he wrote in his book. “He rarely sought counsel outside that group. He did not, as other presidents have done, place a high value on consulting with members of Congress.”
Correction: This post was updated to reflect that LaHood was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
