Boehner Holds Own Jobs Forum, Slams Obama

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), flanked by economists who attended his economic roundtable on Thursday, slammed the White House and Congressional Democrats for promoting policies that he said have only cost jobs and pushed the country deeper into debt.

Boehner convened the meeting of conservative-leaning economists to counter President Barack Obama’s jobs summit, held at the White House on Thursday afternoon.

“The biggest problem that we heard from our economists, with regard to why employers aren’t hiring, is that all the job-killing policies that are being offered by this administration and this Congress are creating an awful lot of uncertainty for American employers,” Boehner told reporters after the 53-minute discussion had concluded. “The underlying theme of everything the administration and the Democrats are pursuing right now leads to greater national debt,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who served as economic policy director for Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) 2008 presidential campaign.

House Republicans have spent months attacking the Democrats' $787 billion economic stimulus bill, calling the measure a failure and charging that it produced far fewer jobs that Democrats promised.