Boehner mocks GOP colleagues for balking at immigration reform

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) mocked the rest of his GOP caucus on Thursday for being too scared to take on immigration reform.

“Here’s the attitude. ‘Ohhhh. Don’t make me do this. Ohhhh. This is too hard,’ ” Boehner said at a lunch hosted by a rotary club in his home district, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

{mosads}Boehner said voters elect people to Congress to solve problems, but he said it’s “remarkable” that many of his fellow Republicans don’t want to fulfill that obligation.

“We get elected to make choices,” he said. “We get elected to solve problems, and it’s remarkable to me how many of my colleagues just don’t want to. … They’ll take the path of least resistance.”

Boehner said he’s been working for more than a year to try to push immigration reform through Congress.

“I’ve had every brick and bat and arrow shot at me over this issue just because I wanted to deal with it. I didn’t say it was going to be easy,” he said.

Despite his complaint, Boehner has said at Capitol Hill press conferences this year that he can’t pursue reform because President Obama can’t be trusted to enforce the law properly.

The speaker has warned reform would be “almost impossible” if Obama continues to sign executive orders to change the system.

Last year, the Senate passed a comprehensive measure that would have reformed the system, but House GOP leaders have refused to consider that version.

Boehner has previously suggested it would be easier to pass reform through piecemeal measures.

His comments come after several Illinois Republican lawmakers expressed their openness on Tuesday to providing some form of legal status to people living in the United States illegally.