Boehner said he’s tired of getting his rear-end burnt during these high profile negotiations, has decided to let Obama duke it out with the Senate first to see what they can come up with before he chimes in:

BUSINESS INSIDER – John Boehner is pulling back. After two stressful years as Washington’s most powerful Republican and a pair of failed, high-profile rounds of budget talks with President Barack Obama — and disappointment over Obama’s re-election — the battle-scarred House speaker has adopted a you-first approach to the Democrat in the White House, his allies who control the Senate and anyone else who wants to work with them.

Upcoming across-the-board spending cuts set to slam the economy in two weeks? Boehner says a solution is up to Obama and Senate Democrats.

New ideas to prevent gun violence? Let’s see what the Senate can pass, Boehner says, then we’ll take a look.

Immigration reform? Boehner says it’s best left to bipartisan working groups in both the House and Senate.

And the litany of new initiatives unveiled by Obama in Tuesday’s State of the Union address?

“If he’s got such good ideas, his party in the Senate could pass it,” Boehner told The Associated Press in an interview in his Capitol office. “Then we’d be happy to take a look at it.”

Boehner’s almost Zen-like approach is a break from the experience of two years ago. Fortified by dozens of tea party freshmen, he and the GOP House stormed the Washington battlefield with abandon, winning some concessions on spending but seeing many initiatives killed by the Senate and overshadowed by the presidential campaign.

Boehner has taken political heat from Republicans for two failed rounds of budget talks with Obama in which he got ahead of the GOP rank and file in offering Obama new tax revenues. He left both sets of talks, accusing the White House of shifting demands and being unwilling to address major spending programs.

“Frankly, every time I’ve gotten into one of these high-profile negotiations, you know, it’s my rear end that got burnt,” Boehner says.

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