Obama, Pelosi at Odds

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has begun criticizing President Obama in public—for example, taking aim at his decision to exempt defense spending from a budget freeze and tax breaks for small businesses to hire workers. “What you’re seeing now in public has been building in private,” a top House Democratic official tells Politico. “Both ends of the Capitol—the House and the Senate—are starting to wonder if they’re on their own. You have a lot of frustration there. And the White House’s reaction to all of that seems to be, ‘Run against Congress’—which, as you can imagine, doesn’t go over very well with House members. The White House reaction seems to be, ‘Position ourselves against Congress.’”