Democratic leaders are “overplaying their hands” given the Democratic leadership’s unwillingness to sit down at the table with House Speaker John Boehner to agree on negotiations, Rep. Mark Sanford said Wednesday.
“What happened six months ago or two years ago is not relevant to the crisis that we’re at right now,” the Republican congressman from South Carolina said on Morning Joe. There is “the need for all three parties to sit down at the table, and the need for, frankly, Harry Reid and the president not to be dismissive of where the House is coming from.”
The government currently operates on a “continued resolution,” which takes the amount of money the country spent last year and spends it this year. That tactic is “horrible” for the government because it plays havoc with agencies, he said.
“It’s real. It’s more than a distraction these days. It’s obviously impacting people’s lives in a variety of different ways,” Sanford said.
The president recently suggested a short-term truce, asking Republicans to vote to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling as long-term negotiations continue. But Boehner affirmed that won’t happen.
“Now our country is being held hostage to a minority of members in the House who say they love the Constitution, but don’t want to honor the existing public debt,” Melody Barnes, former director of the Domestic Policy Council, said on the show.
Sanford “wholly disagreed.”
“History is a degree of indicator,” he said. “[Obama] has had five years in office to address entitlement, and he’s chosen not to. Why is the political pressure going to be any different over the next couple weeks if we kick it down the road to deal with it then as it is now?”
Watch more on Morning Joe.
Michele Richinick