House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) tried out his acting chops during a campaign event in Ohio on Thursday, as he theatrically mocked his fellow Republicans for not wanting to act on immigration reform.
Boehner did quite the imitation of House GOP members while speaking before the Middletown Rotary Club in his home district, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
“Here’s the attitude: ‘Oohhhh. Don’t make me do this,'” Boehner said of his colleagues’ aversion to immigration reform. “‘Oohhh. This is too hard.'”
While many House Republicans do not want to take up the immigration bill that passed the Senate last year, the House Speaker has blamed President Barack Obama for the lower chamber’s inaction and said the president refuses to work with GOP lawmakers.
“We get elected to make choices,” Boehner said. “We get elected to solve problems, and it’s remarkable to me how many of my colleagues just don’t want to … They’ll take the path of least resistance.”
Brendan Buck, a spokesman for the House Speaker, confirmed the remarks to The Huffington Post.
“As the speaker often says to his colleagues, you only tease the ones you love,” he said in an email.
Many House Republicans disapprove of the Democrat-led Senate’s bill because it provides a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the country. Boehner, however, is pushing for reform that strengthens the borders first and enforces immigration laws already on the books.
Still, he struggles to get his colleagues on board.
“I’ve had every brick and bat and arrow shot at me over this issue just because I wanted to deal with it,” he told constituents. “I didn’t say it was going to be easy.”
Though immigration reform is a key pillar of President Obama’s 2014 agenda, it is unlikely the House will move on it this year.
Watch Boehner mock his colleagues below.
