WASHINGTON
(AP) — A potential federal shutdown looming, President Barack Obama on
Monday warned congressional Republicans they could trigger national
"economic chaos" if they demand a delay of his health care law as the
price for supporting continued spending for federal operations.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A potential federal shutdown looming,
President Barack Obama on Monday warned congressional Republicans they
could trigger national "economic chaos" if they demand a delay of his
health care law as the price for supporting continued spending for
federal operations.
House Republican leaders were to meet Tuesday
in hopes of finding a formula that would avoid a shutdown on Oct. 1
without alienating party conservatives who insist on votes to undercut
the Affordable Care Act. Even more daunting is a mid- to late-October
deadline for raising the nation's borrowing limit, which some
Republicans also want to use as leverage against the Obama
administration.
"Are some of these folks really so beholden to one
extreme wing of their party that they're willing to tank the entire
economy just because they can't get their way on this issue?" Obama said
in a speech at the White House. "Are they really willing to hurt people
just to score political points?"
The Republicans don't see it that way.
House
Speaker John Boehner, who opposes the threat of a shutdown, said, "It's
a shame that the president could not manage to rise above partisanship
today." Obama, said Boehner, "should be working in a bipartisan way to
address America's spending problem, the way presidents of both parties
have done before," and should delay implementation of the health care
law.
While
some conservatives supported by the tea party have been making shutdown
threats, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said Monday that was "a dumb idea."
At a community meeting in Louisville, he said, "We should fight for
what we believe in and then maybe we find something in between the two.
... I am for the debate, I am for fighting. I don't want to shut the
government down, though. I think that's a bad solution."
Obama
timed his remarks for the fifth anniversary of the bankruptcy of Wall
Street giant Lehman Brothers, a major early event in the near-meltdown
of the U.S. financial system and a severe global recession. He used the
occasion to draw attention to the still-recovering economy and to what
he called a "safer" system now in place.
He delayed his remarks as
authorities responded to the shootings that officials said left at
least 13 people dead at the Washington Navy Yard just a few miles from
the White House.
His remarks also came amid public skepticism over the state of the economy and his handling of it.
While
unemployment has dropped to 7.3 percent from a high of 10 percent and
the housing market has begun to recover, the share of long-term
unemployed workers is double what it was before the recession, and a
homebuilding revival has yet to take hold. A new analysis conducted for
The Associated Press shows that the gap in employment rates between
America's highest- and lowest-income families has stretched to its
widest level since officials began tracking the data a decade ago.
Obama
conceded the problems, noting that the country has come far from where
it was five years ago "but that's not the end of the story. As any
middle class family will tell you or anybody who's striving to get in
the middle class, we are not yet where we need to be."
The
president said that he inherited the financial ills when he was elected
in 2008, and his National Economic Council issued a report detailing
policies that it said had helped return the nation to a path toward
growth. Those steps ranged from the unpopular Troubled Asset Relief
Program, or TARP, that shored up the financial industry and bailed out
auto giants General Motors and Chrysler, to an $800 billion stimulus
bill and sweeping new bank regulations. Of the $245 billion that the
government injected into the banking system, virtually all of it has
been paid back, the report noted.
"After all the progress that
we've made over these last four and a half years, the idea of reversing
that progress because of an unwillingness to compromise or because of
some ideological agenda is the height of irresponsibility," Obama said.
Conservative
Republicans, on the other hand, say the health care law, which has yet
to take full effect, will place a burden on businesses and the public
and will damage the economy. As a result, they insist that it be starved
of taxpayer money or at least delayed.
Obama also reiterated his
stance that he will not negotiate over the debt ceiling, saying that
failure to raise it could lead to the first national default in U.S.
history.
House
GOP leaders hope to make a decision this week on advancing a temporary
spending measure designed to prevent a shutdown in two weeks.
Conservatives are pressing Boehner and other GOP leaders to include a
provision that would block implementation of Obama's health care law.
Chances
are fading for a complicated GOP leadership plan that would allow the
House to also vote to "defund Obamacare" but automatically separate the
measures when delivering them to the Senate to ease the way for quick
passage of a "clean" funding measure for delivery to Obama.
The
next steps aren't clear, but one option under consideration is to accede
to conservatives' demands to deliver to the Democratic Senate a
combined bill that pays for government and defunds the health care law.
The Senate would be virtually certain to strip away the attack on the
health care law and bounce the funding measure right back to the House.
That
scenario might prove politically frustrating for conservatives, with
the funding measure probably gaining enough votes to win passage in the
House and proceed to the White House for Obama's signature.
Stopgap
spending bills are usually routine, so the difficult path for the
current one hardly inspires confidence for an even more important
measure to raise the government's borrowing cap to make sure it can pay
all of its bills on time. Republicans want to use the debt limit measure
as a mechanism to win further spending cuts on top of those they forced
upon Obama two years ago. Obama has said he wants Congress to pass a
debt limit without conditions.
It's
not clear how the debt limit conundrum will be solved, though a
time-tested recipe would be to add mostly symbolic reforms like a "no
budget, no pay" proposal that worked early this year when House leaders
orchestrated a debt limit increase that was intended to last through
July or so but is now likely to suffice until mid-late October. The idea
was that lawmakers wouldn't get paid if the chamber in which they
served didn't pass a budget. It was a House GOP jab aimed at the Senate,
which hadn't passed a budget since 2009. This year it did but there's
been no effort to reconcile it with a competing House measure.
Obama
intends to continue pressuring Congress with daily events this week,
including a speech Wednesday to the Business Roundtable, an association
of CEOs from the top U.S. companies, and a trip Friday to Kansas City to
visit a Ford plant, where he will promote the strength of the auto
industry.
___
Associated Press writer Bruce Schreiner in Louisville, Ky., contributed to this report.
Playing Chicken for some Republicans likely won't end Obamacare because most people in the U.S. actually want the benefits. However, playing chicken could easily destroy American's credit rating for good and send the U.S. into 2nd class nation status. And the American people won't be happy with those who did this to their countries credit rating. And Obamacare will still be there because just like Social Security and Medicare people want the benefits of their relatives not dying of curable diseases.
However, just like Social Security barely resembles what it was when enacted in the 1930s and likewise Medicare barely resembles what it was when it started out, Obamacare within 20 years barely will resemble what it is today too. But, the basic needs of the American people are starting to finally be addressed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A potential federal shutdown looming,
President Barack Obama on Monday warned congressional Republicans they
could trigger national "economic chaos" if they demand a delay of his
health care law as the price for supporting continued spending for
federal operations.
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