Senator: ‘Increasingly Clear [Obama’s] Comfortable Going Off the Cliff’
4:44 PM, DEC 3, 2012 • BY DANIEL HALPER
Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming believes President Barack Obama is “comfortable going off the [fiscal] cliff.”
“I think the president is increasingly showing his hand that he is comfortable going off the cliff,” Barrasso tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD, in response to a question about President Obama’s negotiation strategy. “He’s not involving Republicans in the process. He was playing golf this weekend with Bill Clinton, Ron Kirk, and ex-DNC chair Terry McAuliffe. He’s not seeming to be one to work together. He seems to be lecturing more than listening. And I just think that it’s increasingly clear he’s comfortable going off the cliff.”
The Republican senator believes Obama’s posture is being reinforced by bad advice he’s getting from some of his fellow Democrats. “[T]hat’s what he’s being advised to do by a number of his Democratic colleagues—Howard Dean, former chairman of the DNC said they should go off the cliff, Patty Murray, who ran the senatorial committee, said they should go off the cliff,” says Barrasso in a phone interview, referring multiple times to Obama’s weekend golf outing with Democratic stalwarts.
Barrasso thinks Obama should be working on getting a deal with the Republicans in Congress instead of spending his weekend on the golf course with such partisans.
Additionally, Barrasso believes Obama’s willingness to go off the cliff relates to his view of achieving fairness through the tax code.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/senator-increasingly-clear-obamas-comfortable-going-cliff_664432.html