The Hill News

Rick Santorum said President Obama emerged as the victor from the supercommittee's failure to reach a deficit-reduction compromise.

The Republican presidential candidate and former Pennsylvania senator said Monday that Obama got exactly what he wanted with the automatic trigger cuts to defense spending that will go into effect because the panel failed to reach a deal.

"If you think about it he's the big winner here," Santorum said in an interview with the Nashua Telegraph editorial board. "He's accomplished what he wanted by being an absentee leader on very important issues."

Santorum's comments came the same day that Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), a member of the committee, said that Democrats were the ones on the panel that ruined any chance of making a deal. He said there was "something to" the idea that Democrats had an incentive for the committee to not reach a deal.

Santorum also blamed President Obama for not being more involved in the supercommittee's dealings. He said that there was "very little evidence that the president tried to participate."

"He played politics with this," Santorum said. "He's acting like a politician running for office than a president governing."