The Obama administration may be trying to take on too many issues and losing focus on the economy, one veteran Democratic lawmaker said Monday.
Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.), the chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, worried during an interview on CNBC that the Congress can only focus on so many issues — and that chief among those should be the economy.
“Some of us have our own internal criticism of the president. I’m rather external about my criticism,” said Kanjorski, a Democrat now serving his 13th term in Congress. “I think we can only afford to concentrate on just a couple of major issues at a time.”
Kanjorski, who has been helping craft financial regulation reform with an eye in particular on derivatives and securities, said that all that should matter right now is the economy.
“Quite frankly, everything else doesn’t matter if you get the economy wrong,” Kanjorski argued. “The reality is that I think we probably have more on our plate at this time than we should have.”
The Pennsylvania lawmaker also castigated “artificial time schedules” on issues as Congress struggles to meet self-imposed deadlines on issues like climate change and healthcare reform legislation.