Boehner said Americans can make themselves heard by voting in the November 2 election to replace President Barack Obama’s Democrats in Congress with a new Republican majority.
“Americans have been crystal clear about what they want: more jobs, less spending and a more open Congress that respects and abides by the Constitution,” Boehner said in a speech prepared for delivery at a small manufacturing company in his congressional district in West Chester, Ohio.
“If those things are going to happen, then we need a new majority in Congress that will stand up to President Barack Obama and insist that he start listening to the people,” Boehner said.
With just weeks to go before Election Day, polls show Republicans appear headed toward taking control of the House and perhaps the Senate, largely because of voter anger about the weak US economy.
If Republicans capture the House after four years of Democratic rule, Boehner is in line to become the chamber’s speaker.
Boehner, in excerpts of his speech released by his office, recalled a meeting Republicans had last February with Obama on the president’s plan to overhaul the US healthcare system over their objections.
“President Obama told us it’s OK to have deep philosophical differences and different visions for where we’d lead our country. ‘That’s what elections are for,’” Boehner recalled the president as saying.
“Ladies and gentlemen, your government hasn’t been listening. Your government is disrespecting you, your family, your job, your children. Your government is out of control. Do you have to accept it? Do you have to take it? Of course you don’t. That’s what elections are for,” Boehner said.
In his speech, Boehner recalled his days as a small businessman in Ohio before being elected to Congress in 1990.
Boehner said small businesses employ a quarter of US workers and created most of the new jobs in the past decade.
“Small businesses like these are essential to the American dream. And right now that dream is under siege.”
“Elected officials with no understanding of how our economy works spent money with reckless abandon, running up the deficit and telling us we could pay for it all by raising taxes.”
“It was clear they believed the engine of prosperity in America is government itself. The thinking went like this: if you want more jobs, then spend more money. Collect more taxes, and redistribute them from the federal level. Make government bigger.”
“If you’ve been paying any attention at all to the Obama administration, this thinking may sound familiar. It’s not ‘new.’ In fact there’s nothing ‘new’ about it. And anyone who’s ever created a private sector job in America can tell you it is dead wrong.”
