Boehner provided no specifics of how he would go about changing the political atmosphere in Washington, something that Mr. Obama said he wanted to work toward at the start of his presidency.

In other administration response, Vice President Joe Biden asserted that in the November congressional elections, Americans will reject Republican policies that he said had driven the economy and middle class into the ground.

"Let me tell you, there are millions upon millions of Americans who saw their savings, their paychecks, shrink, lost their jobs, their homes," he said. "Mr. Boehner is nostalgic for those good old days. But the American people are not. They don't want to go back. They want to move forward."

Biden's remarks are in essence, the game plan that President Obama, others in his administration, and congressional Democrats will pursue in the weeks before the November election.

With the president's job approval ratings dropping as low as 41 percent in one recent poll, Democrats will more intensively portray Republicans as advocating reckless policies that might reverse economic gains achieved so far under Mr. Obama, however fragile those may be.