Bob Filner Quotes

This was one of the most remarkable statements made by a Congressional leader. At the time, the Congress was in the midst of one of the worst stalemates in American Political History. The national debt limit had to be raised in order to legally pay for the expenses that the Congress had voted for and the President had approved. A minority of the House—the Tea Party--tried to use the necessary legislation to get a program of theirs legislated when they did not have the votes to pass it in both houses of Congress. The House would not approve any solution that the Senate would pass, and the Senate would not pass any of the House proposals. The Boenner and the President had reached a compromise but the minority of his own party refused to go along and threatened to oust the Speaker and not vote for the Compromise. To them, compromise was surrender and doing business as usual. At the same time, the left wing of the President’s party did not want to vote for the Compromise plan that the President and the Speaker had worked out. Then the Minority Leader of the Senate, create a new plan that would transcend solve the immediate problem and defer the larger issues which would continue to be debated. The Senate Majority Leader agreed to go along with it and so did the President, but the Minority Leader’s fellow Republicans in the House refused to vote for that compromise. The President and then Boenner went on national television sequentially to explain the situation and the Speaker made this famous quotation, Boenner, we caught in an impossible situation. His Tea Party faction insisted that there need not be a stalemate. The President and the Senate needed the debt limit raised and they would have to give in and vote for the Tea Party plan. Almost all of the Tea Party members were new to Congress and Bonner realized that an entire party who controlled the Senate would never be blackmailed that way, and even if they did, the President would Veto. Yet his own deputy was preferred by the Tea Party and some others, so if Boenner tried to act statesman like, he was risking his speakership. So he became the spokesperson of the Tea Party wing and denied what 90 percent of all Americans knew to be true. Usually absurd statements clearly contrary to the facts at the time are the results of mistakes or gaffs. Occasionally, a more complex situation explains it.

In the early years of the Obama Administration, the minority leader of the Senate declared that the object of the Republicans in the Senate was to prevent Obama from being reelected. Therefore, the Republicans used the filibuster to block virtually all legislation. In 2010, the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives and would not pass any legislation that the President favored lest he get credit for accomplishing something. It had gotten so bad, that even when the President proposed Republican ideas about which everyone agreed, that too was blocked.

The historian was comparing Obama to other historical presidents who either had a majority of both Houses of Congress or had an opposition party that was generally quite cooperative and willing to compromise for the sake of running the country smoothly. At this point in time there was a Tea Party wing of the Republican that was particularly negative and obstructionist. They tended to threaten and intimidate the main stream Republicans who used the filibuster to block legislation the majority of Senators had voted for more times than all the other Congresses in American history. And that was only in Obamas first 6 years.

This was one of the worst Congresses in American History and had the worst productivity record—passing very few bills, and none of any significance. The anti-government, Tea Party hyper-conservative Wing of the Republican Party intimidated the Speaker of the House and they were opposed to any compromise at all on anything.