Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner, Ohio Republican, addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday evening after receiving the John M. Ashbrook Award.
Speaker Boehner sent a message to the Tea Party movement that House Republicans are standing by their promises.
“I said that while others mock the Tea Party and call them names, we would listen to them, stand with them, and walk among them. And that’s exactly what we’re doing,” he said.
In his speech to CPAC’s Thursday’s dinner audience, Mr. Boehner went after President Barack Obama over jobs and the debt ceiling saying, A trillion dollars in wasteful ‘stimulus’ spending left Americans asking: Mr. President, where are the jobs? And now President Obama is asking us to raise the national debt ceiling – without any commitment to cutting spending at the same time.”
Republicans have been criticized by Democrats for not wanting to cut spending as much as the GOP initially pledged. Mr. Boehner told CPAC attendees:
“Let me be very clear about this: we are going to exceed our Pledge to America. We are going to cut $100 billion in discretionary spending next week. Write it down. $100 billion in discretionary spending. And we aren’t going to stop there. Once we’re done with the CR, we’re going to cut mandatory spending.”
