President Obama Defends Policies at House Republican Conference

Before hundreds of Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives, President Barack Obama defended his plan to lower unemployment, his health care plan, and his administration’s foreign policy.

Just a few days after delivering the State of the Union address, Obama fielded questions from dozens of his political opponents, alone at a podium in front of an audience of detractors.

President Obama Defends Policies at House Republican Conference

While Obama attempted to deflect nearly all of the criticism he received, he did take responsibility for the “stray cats and dogs” that made it into his health care bill. Obama alluded to one of these “strays,” saying that he had intended for people who already have insurance to be able to keep it without any problems, but that the bill made it difficult for that to happen:

“I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge,” he said.

However, Obama pledged immediately afterwards to remove such provisions to make it easier for people to keep the health insurance that they already have.

In addition, Obama spent much of the early part of the conversation defending his administration’s spending record, which was devoted mainly to economic stimulus packages. In response to a claim by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin that his administration has increased spending by 84%, Obama said “The fact of the matter is that most of the increases in this year’s budget were not as a consequence of policies that we initiated, but instead were built in as a consequence of the automatic stabilizers that kick in because of this enormous recession. So the increase in the budget for this past year was actually predicted before I was ever sworn into office.”

The entire video of President Obama’s discussion with the House Republicans can be found online at the White House’s official website.