President Barack Obama said this evening in a statement to the press that “the American people are a lot more sensible and a lot more thoughtful and much more willing to compromise and give and sacrifice and act responsibly than their elected representatives are. And that’s a problem. There’s a mismatch right now between how everybody else is thinking about these problems, Democrats and Republicans,” according to a rush transcript of the remarks.

In particular, Obama is referring to the “fiscal cliff” negotiations.