In his first live interview since the campaign ended, former GOP Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan said President Obama is not willing to work together with Republicans in Congress.
Ryan charged that the president's actions and statements between election day and now lead Ryan to believe that Obama is "thinking more of a political conquest than political compromise."
The House Budget Chairman also warned of the impending fiscal crisis and argued that the president is not concerned with solving problems, but instead, getting political victories. "I don't think that the president thinks we actually have a fiscal crisis," he said, later adding, "my concern is the president may be focused on political ends, you know in 2014, versus actually moving to the middle."
One of those political battles is set to take place over the $1.2 trillion in sequestration cuts that were delayed three months as part of the fiscal cliff deal. Ryan believes the cuts will happen, and blamed Democrats in Congress for unwillingness to compromise.
"We think these sequesters will happen because the Democrats have opposed our efforts to replace those cuts with others and they've offered no alternatives," he said.
As for 2016, Ryan said it was "premature" to think about running for president and that he would "decide later."
You can watch the entire program on our website featuring our roundtable discussion about the president's second term as well as NBC's Ted Koppel on the foreign policy risks that lie ahead in the next four years.
For more on foreign policy, be sure to watch our PRESS Pass conversation with former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, now foreign policy director at the Brookings Institution Martin Indyk.
We'll be back next week. If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press.
