New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is accusing national lawmakers, including those in his own Republican party, of failing to do their job of running the government.
"You send people down here to run the government, not to shut it down. And everybody's failed," Christie said
in an interview with the Daily Beast posted online Monday.
"You get hired to do a job. Do your job," the governor continued in the interview, which was conducted Friday while Christie was in Washington to receive a volunteerism award from the Points of Light foundation.
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"There are too many people down here who spend all their time pontificating rather than working. And that applies to both parties. I don't have patience for that."
Christie, a leading potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate, is expected
to win his race for re-election easily in November. His outspokenness and criticism of a few conservative Republicans has alienated some in his party. But he remains a strong favorite among Republican voters in general and is even expected to attract Democratic support.
Christie told the Daily Beast he was surprised that President Barack Obama did not meet with lawmakers before Friday as the shutdown that began Oct. 1 was about to enter its second week.
"There's enough blame to go around for everybody," the governor said. "Because we saw this coming for months. We've been talking about it for months! And the president should have intervened. I mean, today's the first time he has people over to the White House to talk about it? Everybody's at fault here."
Christie also
told the Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board on Friday that things are so messed up in Congress that if he was "in the Senate right now, I'd kill myself."
"It's irresponsible of both sides to allow this to get where it's gotten," the Inquirer quoted him as saying.
"They saw this train coming for a long time and did nothing to stop it," he added.
The governor was asked by the editorial board about a meeting he had Wednesday with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other GOP senators during a visit to Capitol Hill.
"What I said to any of them that I met with: Get the government reopened, stop monkeying around, and get back to work. I said, I'm out there in the field, people have no patience for this stuff. None," he told the board.
Christie was campaigning in Philadelphia as well on Friday, and at one stop made reference to the shutdown.
"With what we see going on in Washington DC, right now they could use a dose of some New Jersey common sense," he told the crowd, referring to Washington as "an alternate universe."
"Notice I said New Jersey common sense, not Republican common sense or Democrat common sense."
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"I have to tell ya," he continued, according to the Inquirer, "I was so thrilled to get out of there alive . . . and seemingly not infected by the awful partisanship that is going on down there now."
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