President Obama made an appearance at today’s White House press briefing. He spoke about his bipartisan meeting on jobs today, railed against Sen. Richard Shelby’s holds on nominations (and threatened to do recess appointments) and gave his definition of bipartisanship.
Obama spoke about his bipartisan talk scheduled for later this month. House Republicans have called for Obama to scrap the current health care bills in order for them to fully come to the table — but Obama dismissed this idea.
“I’m going to be starting from scratch in the sense that I will be open to any ideas that help promote these goals. What I will not do, what I don’t think makes sense and what I don’t think the American people want to see is another year of partisan wrangling around these issues, another six months or eight months or nine months worth of hearings in every single committee in the House and the Senate in which there’s a lot of posturing,” he said. “Let’s get the relevant parties together. Let’s put the best ideas on the table. My hope is that we can find enough overlap that we can say, this is the right way to move forward even if I don’t get every single thing that I want.”
“Bipartisanship can’t be that I agree to all the things that they believe in or want and they agree to none of the things that I believe or want,” Obama continued.
Later, he said, “That’s not how it works in any other realm of life. That’s certainly not how it works in my marriage with Michelle, although I do give in most of the time. There’s gotta be some give and take.”
He also said Republicans who talk about deficit reduction must acknowledge that the biggest grower of the deficit is health care costs.
He said today’s meeting with Republican and Democratic lawmakers was focused on creating jobs, and he expressed optimism that the parties would cooperate.
He also mentioned Shelby’s blanket hold on 70 of his nominees, and said he asked Republican leaders to stop such holds so nominations aren’t held up for months at a time. (Shelby dropped his blanket hold, but is still holding three nominations until he gets certain earmarks for his state.)
“If the Senate does not act — and I made this very clear — if the Senate does not act to confirm these nominees, I will consider making several recess appointments during the upcoming recess, because we can’t afford to allow politics to stand in the way of a well-functioning government,” he said.
