The New York Times, in its article "Obama Visits Capitol to Press Republicans on Stimulus Plan", quotes President Obama urging legislators to "put politics aside and do the American people's business right now."
"Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, said after the meeting that significant philosophical differences remained between the president and the Republicans, but they also agreed on several fronts. The mere fact of the meeting, he said, was an early sign of a willingness by the White House to solicit input from all sides. ...
But even before the president stepped into the meeting, Republican leaders in the House asked their members during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday to oppose the recovery plan unless significant adjustments are made before the bill comes up for a vote on Wednesday. ...
“The goal is to seek their input,” Robert Gibbs, a White House spokesman, said of the meetings with Republicans. “He wants to hear their ideas. If there are good ideas — and I think he assumes there will be — we will look at those ideas.”
- Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times
When Republicans are in control, in the White House and Congress, they ride roughshod over feckless Democrats. When the G.O.P. is not in power, they play a partisan game of obstructionism, and cry phony fouls.
As Bob Herbert writes today in his New York Times column, "The Same Old Song", "When the G.O.P. talks, nobody should listen."
"The question that I would like answered is why anyone listens to this
crowd anymore. G.O.P. policies have been an absolute backbreaker for
the middle class. (Forget the poor. Nobody talks about them anymore,
not even the Democrats.) The G.O.P. has successfully engineered a
wholesale redistribution of wealth to those already at the top of the
income ladder and then, in a remarkable display of chutzpah, dared
anyone to talk about class warfare. ...
When the G.O.P. talks, nobody should listen. Republicans have argued, with the collaboration of much of the media, that they could radically cut taxes while simultaneously balancing the federal budget, when, in fact, big income-tax cuts inevitably lead to big budget deficits. We listened to the G.O.P. and what do we have now? A trillion-dollar-plus deficit and an economy in shambles."
- Bob Herbert, The New York Times