Sunday Sound: Heard on 'This Week'

The most notable comments made Sunday on "This Week"

ByABC News
May 20, 2012, 12:28 PM

May 20, 2012— -- Below are some of the notable comments made Sunday on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

House Speaker John Boehner

The President's "Failing Policies"

1) BOEHNER: The president's policies have failed. That's why the American people are so concerned. And that's why the election basically is a dead heat at this point, which it really shouldn't even be anywhere close. But I do think that it's going to be about the-- the issue is going be the economy. And I believe that Governor Romney's proposals will strengthen our economy and get more Americans back to work.

JP Morgan and "Stupid Trades" and Dodd-Frank's "Big Problems"

2) STEPHANOPOULOS: How about on the issue of JPMorgan? We saw that their losses continue to climb on this trade, but many believe, and I know it's still a murky question, but many believe it would run afoul of the Dodd-Frank law. And it's some-- and they believe that this is a sign, though, that even tougher regulation may be needed. Are you still confident that repealing Dodd-Frank is the right thing to do in the case of stories like this?

BOEHNER: George-- there's no law against stupidity. No law against stupid trades. And as long as depositers money wasn't at risk, and as long as there's no risk of a taxpayer bailout-- they should be held accountable by the market and their shareholders. And they are. I don't believe there's anything in Dodd-Frank-- that would've prevented-- this activity-- at JPMorgan.

3) BOEHNER: I think there are big problems with Dodd-Frank. Very big problems that will make capital harder to develop, to make it harder to create economic growth, and will hurt the prospects for improving our economy and jobs. There's just gaping holes in there. And frankly, the administration knows that there are big problems for this law, and it needs some big changes.

Boehner on Jobs, Debt and Getting Bills Passed

4) BOEHNER: The American people are still asking questions. Where are the jobs? And dealing with our deficit and our debt-- would help create more economic growth-- in the United States. And it would lift the cloud of uncertainty that's causing-- employers to wonder what's next. So dealing with our debt and our deficit are critically important.

5) BOEHNER: The issue is the debt. You know, people aren't-- clamoring to invest in Greece today. And if we don't begin to deal with our debt and our deficit in-- in an honest and serious way, we're not gonna have many options. Listen-- I'm not going to apologize for leading. The real issue here is will the president lead?

6) BOEHNER: .. I've never-- been shy about leading. But you know, leaders need followers. And we've got 89 brand new members. We've got a pretty disparate caucus.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Some say they're leading you.

BOEHNER: It is hard to keep-- 218 frogs in a wheelbarrow long enough to get a bill passed.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi

7) PELOSI: My response to what the speaker said is here we go again. Last year just the threat of not lifting the debt ceiling caused us to-- our-- our credit rating to be lowered. This is not a responsible, mature, sensible place for us to go. We all know we have to reduce the deficit. We have to do it in a balanced way. The speaker wants to go over the edge. We- we have cut a trill -over a trillion dollars in the Budget Control Act since the Budget Control Act of last year. There has to be more reductions but we have to have revenue and have to have growth.

8) PELOSI: This election, if it is about the economy, the president will make his case that he has been a job creator from day one. The president's record of job creation, taking us from a deep recession, almost a depression-- to a hopeful place versus whatever the Republicans will propose. But they have stood in the way of every job-- piece of legislation that would be significant in that regard.

9) Pelosi defended the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for capitalizing on the advertising plan to link Obama to Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

PELOSI: Why-- why would we have any regrets? He has -- he stood by his remarks in February. So I think maybe it might be useful to see what he said in February and see that he stands by those remarks. But that's not what the election's about. The election is about three things: jobs, jobs and jobs. This election is not about Reverend Wright.

Roundtable

The "This Week" powerhouse roundtable debates all the week's politics, with ABC News' George Will, political strategist and ABC News contributor Donna Brazile, political strategist and ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd, radio host Laura Ingraham, and California Lieutenant Governor and Current TV host Gavin Newsom.

The Roundtable Responds to the Pelosi and Boehner Interviews: Debt and Dysfunction in Washington

10) INGRAHAM: When I heard Nancy Pelosi say, well, it's time for us to be responsible, we need to look mature in this process, does $15 trillion look mature or responsible? So the debacle only becomes the conversation about what to do about the crisis, yet the debacle of the debt that we're being crushed under isn't called a debacle by huge swaths of the political classes.

11) DOWD: We're going to have an election. And the aftermath of the election -- and I don't mean to be pessimistic about this -- is only going to be more dysfunction. We're going to have less of a margin in the House, no matter who holds it. We're going to have less of a margin in the Senate, no matter who holds it. And if you have Mitt Romney as president or Barack Obama as president, there's no -- going to be no sense in the country that there is a long-term vision from either one of them of how to solve the dysfunction in Washington and creating some trust in the government. That's the problem here. And until we solve that problem, nobody buys into anything any of these guys say.

12) BRAZILE: We've had 30 years of talking about tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. We need to have a year where we talk about how to create jobs, how to stabilize the economy, how to invest in infrastructure. That's what we're missing in this conversation.

Reacting to the Democrats Using Romney's Bain Tenure in Ads

13) NEWSOM: If you worked for Kodak, where they had 19,000 jobs and are bankrupt. And you contrast that to the great wealth creator of our times. That's Facebook and this IPO, $100-plus billion market cap, only 3,000 jobs. So there's this retooling of the economy creates tremendous anxiety. Going after Bain, that participated in the creation of that anxiety, as you argue, I think is good politics and I think it's sound policy to have that discussion and that debate.

14) WILL: They're focusing in this one ad on a steel mill at a time in the '90s when in one year the American steel industry, the six largest firms lost $3 billion. The industry had already shed 200,000 jobs as a result of a steel glut in the world. Bain comes in -- now, the accusation in the ad is Bain came in as vultures to suck the wealth out and go away. Bain invested $100 million in this. That's a funny way of sucking wealth out of it.

15) BRAZILE: Well, they buy up companies…they sell the assets, lay off the workers, and then leave town. There's more to this Bain thing than just one company and one industry. I think it's a large story. And since Mitt Romney won't talk about exactly how he will create jobs, he gives us a number and it changes with the weather… And I think the Obama campaign is right to use it. Ted Kennedy used it effectively in 1994. And it's going to be used again and again until Mitt Romney can explain exactly what he was doing at that time.

Did the Recent New York Times Article Accurately Reflect Joe Ricketts's Actions and Alleged Plan to Raise Ties between Obama and Rev. Wright?

16) WILL: Joe Ricketts didn't end up repudiating it. He repudiated it the instant he saw it. His group is called End Spending. That's what he's interested in, not the social issues, nothing else. He asked through some of his people for someone to produce a plan, but what they got was a plan that ignored what he's interested in and went after Reverend Wright and all this other stuff. Ricketts took one look at it and said no. Now, the New York Times -- that didn't fit their narrative, billionaire behaving responsibly. So they said he's studying it, they have commissioned this. They've neglected the whole fact which was that this is a small story with a nice ending, which is a responsible affluent man said no.

17) INGRAHAM: If you are a wealthy, wealthy person in the United States, you happen to be conservative, you're going to get involved in this election, then we are going to watch everything that you do, and you sort of step over the line, you talk about past associations with President Obama, anything like that, we will try to destroy you. This means not even -- as far as I know, he didn't even see this proposal. And the idea that he was considering it was a total false narrative put forward by the New York Times to send a message to other people, don't you dare get involved in this election, in any type of, quote, "controversial way."

Is Facebook a "Passing Phase"?

18) WILL: A few days before they issued this, Facebook, which is about advertising -- it's not about pictures of your dog wearing a clown costume. It's about advertising at the end of the day. Three days before this was issued, the third-largest advertiser on Facebook, General Motors, $10 million a year, said we're not doing this anymore because we see no evidence that this is effective. That's a small tremor, but it could mean that the whole economic model on which this projected $104 billion company rests is faulty.

19) INGRAHAM: When your parents are on Facebook -- and I would say our grandparents are on Facebook, the kids are like, eh, maybe it's not such a cool place to be after all. That's -- maybe we'll do Pinterest. Maybe we'll move to the next wave. We're going to do more stuff on our cell phone that does not involve this massive outreach to people. We'll have more private Facebook pages or the next Facebook. And so I think you got to -- you got to wonder whether this is just more of a passing phase