Barrasso: Obama 'Lecturing More than Listening' on Fiscal Cliff

Republican Sen. John Barrasso has blasted President Barack Obama for failing to work with GOP leaders to avoid the upcoming fiscal cliff.

Instead, the Wyoming senator said, “He was playing golf this weekend with Bill Clinton, Ron Kirk, and ex-DNC chair Terry McAuliffe.

“He’s not seeming to be one to work together. He seems to be lecturing more than listening. And I just think that it’s increasingly clear he's comfortable going off the cliff," Barrasso told The Weekly Standard.

Barrasso blamed “bad advice” the president is getting from Democrats such as former National Committee chairman Howard Dean and Sen. Patty Murray, the co-chair of last year’s supercommittee that was tasked with finding a way round the debt crisis. Both have suggested that allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire and bringing in swingeing cuts to military and domestic spending might not be a bad idea.

"The president is so fixated on higher taxes that he’s giving up on [the prospect of] a healthy economy. We’re going to see unemployment over 9 percent in this second recession, I believe, if the president doesn’t work together to find a bipartisan solution," he said.