WASHINGTON — Americans might see their political system as rigged against them and in favor of big-money donors, special interests and incumbent members of Congress.
But House Speaker John Boehner says he’s not buying any of it.
The Ohio Republican dismissed each of those concerns Sunday in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Money in politics? “We spend more money on antacids than we do on politics,” Boehner said.
Overly influential special interests? “Everybody’s a special interest. When I get home, everybody I talk to has their own interest,” he said.
Gerrymandered districts that predetermine elections’ outcomes? “You can call it gerrymandering, but in Ohio, the Democrats had the pencil in their hand for 50 years. Now the Republicans have had it for the last 20 years. Our turn to draw the lines.”
Rather than all of that, it’s “the competition of ideas is what matters,” Boehner said.
“And there’s a lot of good ideas and a lot of bad ideas that float through here. But it’s, in my view, a misconception of the so-called special interests,” he said.
He said his constituents care about what he does on Capitol Hill — but “not who I listen to, all right, not how I run my campaign.”
“It’s based on how I vote and what I do here. And frankly, the Congress on both sides of the aisle, I’d say 95% of the people here are good, honest, decent people trying to represent their constituents to the best of their ability,” Boehner said.
“We live in an imperfect political system,” he said. “We live in an imperfect democracy. But as bad as it is, guess what? It’s better than anyplace else in the world.”
