When questioned about his leadership on Sunday, House Speaker John Boehner said that Congress can be a tough place these days, and then he reached for a metaphor. “It is hard to keep 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow long enough to get a bill passed,” he said.
As Boehner heads toward what may be one of the most challenging legislative periods ever, some question whether he can manage his caucus and deliver for Republicans on issues like the Bush-era tax cuts, the debt ceiling and the budget “sequester” set to violently cut defense and domestic spending.
In a conversation with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, Boehner addressed some of those questions, pinning part of the problem on a sometimes-unruly caucus filled with lawmakers he said are “pretty frustrated.”
“I've never been shy about leading,” he said, according to an ABC transcript. “But, you know, leaders need followers. And we've got 89 brand new members. We've got a pretty disparate caucus.”
He continued: “We always have some members who wanna do more. I wanna do more too. But Republicans are still a minority here in Washington.”
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