Flash version 10,0 or greater is required
You have no flash plugin installed
Download latest version from here
Eight days into the government shutdown and with the deadline to raise
the debt ceiling looming, President Obama today dug in, reiterating that
he will not negotiate until Republicans agree to reopen the government
and raise the nation's borrowing authority without strings attached.
"Let's stop the excuses. Let's take a vote in the House. Let's end this shutdown right now," Obama told reporters.
House Speaker John Boehner, who has been leading the Republican fight,
held his own news conference shortly after and said, "What the president
said today was, if there is unconditional surrender by Republicans,
he'll sit down and talk to us. That's not the way our government works."
In a hastily announced White House press conference, the president
attempted to ramp up pressure on Republicans, accusing them of
threatening to cause a recession if the administration refuses to gut
Obamacare.
"You don't get to say 'Unless you give me what the voters rejected in the last election I will cause a recession,'" he said.
"Imagine if a Democratic Congress threatened to crash the global economy
unless a Republican president agreed to gun background checks or
immigration reform. I think it's fair to say that Republicans would not
think that was appropriate," he added rhetorically.
Obama held firm, saying he would only negotiate once Republicans "lift
these threats" and pass a clean funding bill to reopen the government
and eliminate the threat of default by agreeing to raise the debt limit.
"I'm ready to head up to the Hill and try. I'll even spring for dinner
again," he quipped.
"But I'm not going to do it until the more extreme
parts of the Republican Party stop forcing John Boehner to issue threats
about our economy. We can't make extortion routine as part of our
democracy.... And this is not just for me. It's also for my successors
in office. Whatever party they're from, they shouldn't have to pay a
ransom either for Congress doing its basic job. We've got to put a stop
to it."
With just nine days left to increase the nation's debt ceiling, the
president warned of the dire consequences of default, saying it would be
"insane, catastrophic, chaos," according to some economists.
"Warren Buffett likened default to a nuclear bomb, a weapon too horrible
to use. It would disrupt markets, it would undermine the world's
confidence in America as the bedrock of the global economy, and it might
permanently increase our borrowing costs which, of course, ironically
would mean that it would be more expensive for us to service what debt
we do have and it would add to our deficits and our debt, not decrease
them," he said.
Obama ridiculed statements by some conservatives who said that default
may not be so bad. "Let's take default out for a spin and see how it
rides," the president said sarcastically.
He suggested he has very few options if Congress fails to act.
"I do worry that Republicans but also some Democrats may think that we've got a bunch of other rabbits in our hat," he said.
Obama fielded questions from the White House Press Corps for the time
since the government shut down, his first solo White House press
conference since Aug. 9.
No comments:
Post a Comment