DeLay: Boehner ‘Had No Agenda’

Former House Majority Leader and Representative Tom DeLay (R-TX) stated that House Speaker Representative John Boehner “had no agenda” on Friday’s “Risk & Reward with Deirdre Bolton” on the Fox Business Network.

DeLay said, “The agenda should be actually presented, and the members should work on it. And that’s one of the problems that Boehner had. He had no agenda. He didn’t — the members didn’t know what the agenda [was], he ran everything from his hip pocket, and that’s the real problem that people are having. They’ve been begging for leadership, and the right thing to do is to — the House to do its job, impose the power of the purse, pass the bills, and lay them on the president’s desk, and make him deal with them. That’s what’s needs to be happening. If he vetoes it, fine, you can send him another bill, like we did on welfare reform, send him two times before he signed them. It builds a political pressure on the president to come to the table and compromise, and then you can compromise down the road.”

DeLay added, “The White House does not have to compromise, because the leadership of the House and the Senate telegraphed to the president that they weren’t going to do anything, that they weren’t going to — the government wasn’t going to shut down, that they can’t pass a bill, and so the president, he doesn’t have to lift a finger, and so he doesn’t have to compromise. That’s what happened in the 90s when Clinton came to a Republican congress, and the Republican congress laid out the bills that he said no, he vetoed them, then laid them out again, and he said no, and vetoed them. And then finally, we went to the American people that way. The pressure builds up. The president says, ‘You know, maybe I ought to do something, maybe I ought to compromise.'”

He concluded, “The American people have brought this about. They have risen up, and they have demanded leadership, and these members know it now, and they’re going to have provide that leadership.”

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