President Obama yesterday: "Before I was even inaugurated, the congressional leaders of the other party got together and made a calculation that if I failed, they’d win. So when I went to meet with them about the need for a Recovery Act, in the midst of crisis, they announced they were against it before I even arrived at the meeting."
The Weekly Standard demolished that idea a while ago.
What really happened is this: Obama spoke to the House Republican conference on the morning of January 27, 2009. The night before, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had already introduced the stimulus bill that she and David Obey drafted with no input from Republicans at all. It was a totally partisan bill. Boehner didn’t put out a statement, but what he told Republicans leaked. What he said was that Republicans would oppose this bill, and he said Obama should override it and work with Republicans on a bipartisan stimulus. Republicans weren’t opposing an Obama bill. They were opposing a partisan bill drafted by House Democrats (which Obama embraced soon afterwards).
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