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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Obama called steaming mad over failed budget deal

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is acknowledging he was angry with House Republicans last year when a supposed “grand bargain” budget agreement with House Speaker John Boehner collapsed.

Obama tells CBS News’ Scott Pelley he doesn’t know if he was mad enough to break a telephone receiver, but says “I wasn’t happy.”

According to author Bob Woodward’s new book entitled “The Price of Politics,” a person in the room with Obama said he thought he was going to smash the receiver.

Obama tells CBS he was angry over what he called “the willingness on the part of some House Republicans to potentially see the United States default on its obligations for the first time, which could have undone all the repair work that we had done coming out of the financial crisis.”