Boehner slams GOP ‘false prophets’ hoping to replace him

House Speaker John Boehner, who announced of Friday he will be stepping down and resigning from Congress on October 30, said his more conservative opponents are not being realistic about how things are accomplished in Washington.

Boehner said he will use his remaining time the same way he would have before he announced his resignation, and that the House will set up a select committee to investigate the Planned Parenthood videos. Ted Cruz, a frequent critic of some of Boehner’s tactics and a cheerleader for government shutdowns, Boehner simply said: “‘I’ll refer you to my remark at a fundraiser I made in August in Steamboat Springs, Colorado”.

“I respect my colleagues”, Pelosi said.

The turmoil in Congress is playing out against an already roiling race for the Republican presidential nomination in which the candidates at the top of opinion polls are all Washington outsiders.

But Boehner and more moderate Republicans have argued that such a move would not halt the bulk of the group’s US$500 ($NZ783) billion in funding, which comes from reimbursements through the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor.

Besides having the Pope bless his six-week-old grandson, Boehner said Pope Francis also asked Boehner to pray for him.

But he said the didn’t want to make fellow Republicans “walk the plank” with voters back home because their constituents felt they weren’t being aggressive enough.

Boehner said Sunday he’s proud of his record and accomplishments during his 25 years in Congress, and that his resignation had nothing to do with pressure from hard-line Republicans.

He railed against his GOP colleagues who voted against the deals he struck with President Obama.

Roskam was first elected to Congress in 2006 after serving in the Illinois House and Senate.

“Well, John has had an impossibly hard job trying to reconcile the conservative wing of his caucus with the extreme, extreme right wing of his caucus that really will not do anything and pass any legislation that Barack Obama will sign”, Bernie Sanders said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation. “So I expect I may have a little more cooperation from some around town to try to get as much finished as possible”.

“Speaker John Boehner is a decent, principled conservative man who tried to do the right thing under nearly impossible circumstances”, Schumer said in a statement. And by the end of the day, Boehner said, “it was pretty obvious to me that, hey, I think it’s time to do this”. To those who say the young conservatives aren’t interested in anything other than posturing, it seems they may be offering someone who has spent an entire career as an effective and even esteemed member of a large legislative body.