Boehner sees ‘hollow targets’ in speech; Ryan calls it ‘hopelessly inadequate’

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Wednesday President Obama has failed to present a detailed and “serious” plan for tackling the national debt and budget deficits.

He also raised the specter that the House will not vote to raise the nation’s debt ceiling if the plans do not get more concrete.

{mosads}Obama, in a much-touted speech, called for cutting budget deficits by $4 trillion over 12 years, which Boehner said falls far short of the 2012 budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). The House is set to vote on the GOP blueprint on Friday.

“Republicans, led by Chairman Ryan, have set the bar with a jobs budget that puts us on a path to paying down the debt and preserves Medicare and Medicaid for the future. This afternoon, I didn’t hear a plan to match it from the president,” Boehner said.

“He is asking Congress to raise the debt limit to continue paying Washington’s bills. The American people will not stand for that unless it is accompanied by serious action to reduce our deficit. More promises, hollow targets and Washington commissions simply won’t get the job done,” Boehner said.

Boehner criticized Obama’s plan for increasing taxes. It would end George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy and eliminate tax earmarks to raise revenue.

He said “any plan that starts with job-destroying tax hikes is a non-starter.”

Ryan also said Obama failed to present a detailed plan that would fully confront the deficit problem and called the tone of the president’s speech overly partisan.

“When the President reached out to ask us to attend his speech, we were expecting an olive branch. Instead, his speech was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our fiscal crisis,” he said in a statement. “What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our commander-in-chief; we heard a political broadside from our campaigner-in-chief.”

Ryan characterized the administration’s call for 16 lawmakers to negotiate a deficit plan with Vice President  Biden as similar to previous calls for a commission to solve the budget woes.

“Last year, in the absence of a serious budget, the President created a Fiscal Commission. He then ignored its recommendations and omitted any of its major proposals from his budget, and now he wants to delegate leadership to yet another commission to solve a problem he refuses to confront,” he said. “We need leadership, not a doubling down on the politics of the past.  By failing to seriously confront the most predictable economic crisis in our history, this President’s policies are committing our children to a diminished future.”