Armey to Boehner: Allow Vote on Fiscal Cliff Plans

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey says that House Speaker John Boehner should permit votes on both Republican and Democratic fiscal cliff plans if President Barack Obama doesn’t show more willingness to compromise.

“Unless the president shows some real negotiating, let’s say vigor, commitment, what I would do if I was John Boehner is I would take my version of what I think is the best policy for America to the floor and offer the Democrats, on behalf of the president, a chance to offer a substitute,” Armey told CBS’ “This Morning,” according to Politico.

The former congressman recently departed as chairman of tea party group FreedomWorks.

As for his idea for votes in Congress, “If the president has his overwhelming mandate from the American people, the 435 members of Congress will recognize that mandate in their districts, and he’ll win the vote,” Armey says.

“If he wins the vote, then he owns the results, and he can take them to the Senate, which is controlled by his party, sign it into law and live with the consequences.”

Meanwhile, Armey denied that the tea party has lost its influence, even though some of its candidates lost in elections last month.

“We had a lot of candidates, quite frankly, that did dumb things out there,” he said. “We had at least two candidates that should have won that, frankly, lost because they said some stupid things on the subject that their parties’ leader should have schooled them to stay away from in the first place. To lay this off on tea party activists across the country, I think is just Alibi Ike on behalf of the Republican Party.”